Mitt Romney is facing a dilemma in how to publicly tackle George W. Bush’s tenure.
Some of Bush’s relatives have recently endorsed Romney, and he will likely be asked about Bush’s legacy and policies on the campaign trail.
The former president remains unpopular with most voters, and polls indicate people still blame him for the ailing economy. But he is liked by large factions of the Republican Party, making it politically dangerous for Romney to criticize him directly.
Romney has rarely mentioned Bush in his 2012 bid for the presidency. During a Thursday press conference where he was endorsed by former President George H.W. Bush and former first lady Barbara Bush, Romney downplayed his connection to their son.
“I haven’t met with President George W. Bush,” Romney said when asked how often they talked. “We speak from time to time.”
The former president has kept a low profile since leaving office, and Democrats privately say that tying Romney to Bush won’t work as well as attacking Romney’s own record. But if Romney embraces Bush too closely — or runs too hard away from him — it could hurt his campaign.
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5 Responses
Why can’t you post a nicer picture? A picture befitting an Ohev Yisroel. Would you want a picture of your father looking like that – one eye open and one eye closed?
The Bush family has waited until now to speak up. I guess they figure it’s safe to speak up now, because they think Romney “has it in the bag.”
However, it appears that Santorum will stick it out till the end, and hope that Romney falls short of the majority vote he needs to get nominated on the first ballot.
Then, it’s wide open for anyone.
He probably should say that just because a dumb policy began under Bush (or Clinton, or Bush Sr.), Obama is guilty for continuing it, and he’ll put a stop to it. While it will take generations before the verdict on Bush’s foreign policies will be known, his economic policies (most of which Obama has continued and expanded) were catastrophic.
Massive deficit spending and bailouts come to mind. Ignoring the Bill of Rights is another (this will appeal to Paul’s supporters), but lately even big government conservatives have been seeing the virtue in the bill of rights protection against overly aggressive prosecutors, ignoring property rights, etc. If he attacks the “Ponzi” aspect of social security funding, he’s not only attacking Obama, but every president back to Roosevelt.
OR, Romney can limit criticism of Obama to policies that Obama started (and in all fairness, Obama hasn’t been all that creative, he borrows most of his stupid ideas from othres) – and give Obama four more years to make mischief.
There he lies an obvious lie again. There’s a picture of both of them together by that Olympics of 2006.
And what’s the problem? let him compliment him on all other things besides the ecconomy! and simply say Bush made a mistake by balling into the Democratic congress’ trap of increesing spending…
Romney should get as far away from any of the bushes as possible the American people had enough of them both conservative and liberal.it is fact ohev yisroel or not he did more damage to this country than Obama did on every front and yes i’m as extreme conservative as they come