republicans' theme: don't look back

Thompson, Giuliani, McCain, Romney and the rest are trying to figure out how to run as Republicans while not being guilty by association with the single worst (de facto) president in American history, George W. Bush. Ugly Fred said, "I think back to 1994. We need to adhere to the principles that made this party great and that made this country the greatest."

Really? Bush has been an unmitigated disaster since being selected by the Supreme Court. But it isn't like the Republican Congress of 1995-2007 was any better than Bush. It wasn't. It featured corruption, cupidity, a refusal to look at important issues like climate change while concentrating on the usual social stupidity of abortion and guns and the Bible.

And before them was George H. W. Bush, who unlike his son fought in the war of his day and was legitimately elected. His legacy? Clarence Thomas. For that alone, Papa Bush deserves our opprobrium and a low ranking.

Then there was Reagan, who began the modern Republican obsession of cutting taxes while showering huge subsidies on big business - not "tax and spend" the way they accuse Democrats, but "borrow and spend" instead.

Before that was Nixon and the short Ford presidency.

I think frankly Fred Thompson needs to look back to Eisenhower (and his prescient warnings about the military-industrial complex...) to find a Republican president who wasn't in net terms very bad for America. Of course, in today's GOP Eisenhower would be branded too liberal to be elected by the Bible-thumping rank-and-file primary voter...

So Fred, John, Rudy, Mitt, and company - that is your past. You deserve to be judged by it. If we had a sane electorate and a fair electoral system, the Republicans would be swept out of the White House for the next 30 years.