RESTORATION THEY CAN BELIEVE IN

I see that sometime on Thursday George W. Bush posted something he calls his "Inaugural Address" on Facebook:



It was innocuous. ("Thanks for tuning in to my inaugural address -- on Facebook. I've been touched by the outpouring of interest. I am pleased to report that Laura and I are happy, healthy and home here in the great state of Texas -- or as I call it, the Promised Land...." The rest of the transcript is here.) It got very little blog attention, even on the right -- the hip stance toward Bush in the right blogosphere, of course, is that, while he valiantly led us in a war against Evil, he was a terrible tax-and-spender (something righty bloggers all noticed only after the GOP started losing elections, and not a second earlier).

And yet Fox Nation, which is part of the media empire that knows the wingnut rank-and-file better than anyone else, has Bush's video as the lead story right now (and I think that may have been true all weekend, given the fact that Fox Nation generally doesn't update its homepage over weekends):



Which means the Fox Nation people think Bush may be yesterday's man among fashion-forward righties, but he's still the bee's knees to the rabble.

And the earliest comments posted at the FN thread sure bear that out:

Just a Dad wondering where America went?

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I recall the mean-spirited critics who ridiculed the way President Bush spoke and ridiculed his "cowboy" mentality. I'll take the slow-talking President who loves America over the a**-kicking, fast-talking Chicago politician any day.

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President Bush will go down as one of the best presidents. Wait and see!

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Mr. President please come back!
Under his leadership everyone drove a truck, owed or rented a home, we had food on the table, business went good
LOOK WHAT WE HAVE NOW!

And on the Facebook page itself, in among some snark, the same thing:

I almost forgot what it was like to hear a dignified, Presidential sounding communication. Hard to believe it has only been about two years, seems like forever since I felt confident in the White House leadership.

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I miss you.I felt safe when you where in charge.I am not sleeping so well any more...!

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God Bless You TOO Mr. President. You are still my President!! Miss you!!

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Thank you for your service. History will see you for the great man that you are.

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We love and miss you and Laura in WV and "NO One" can replace you...holding out for that next republican to take back the White House.....


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Always proud of you Mr. President. God Bless our America. A fellow Texan.

I used to think the publisher of Bush's memoir (which is a Random House imprint, not a Murdoch imprint) agreed to publish it a week after Election Day 2010 in part as a favor to the GOP, in order to keep Bush away from the media as the electorate was preparing to vote. I still think that's part of the thinking behind the book's November 9 release date -- Bush is still wildly unpopular among the general public -- but now I think the biggest problem for the GOP if there were a Bush book tour during the campaign wouldn't be Bush popping up everywhere and reminding us of what a sorry president he was but old-fashioned base Republicans actually responding to him with adulation. I think there'd be small but passionate crowds mobbing him as if he were still a bit of a rock star (for them it's always the Friday after 9/11 and, well, he still is a rock star, with a bullhorn as a guitar). A lot of these people would show up in tea party T-shirts and Sarah Palin regalia. The back-to-the-future message would be obvious.

Well, that won't happen. I fear big wins by the GOP on November 2 -- and if I'm right, a week later we'll see Bush on the Today show and GMA and Larry King, grinning like a Cheshire cat as he's asked about the midterm results, and I hope America will realize, if only too late, what it's done to itself.

Oh, and by the way: how furious would right-wingers be if an ex-Democratic president dared to call an online post, even in jest, an "inaugural address"? Oh, sorry, I forgot: Republicans are always the legitimate presidents, no matter who actually won the last electin.