YOU WANT TO SEE THE REAL THIRD BUSH TERM? STAY HOME IN NOVEMBER AND YOU JUST MIGHT.

Reuters points out just how saturated with Bush veterans the Romney campaign is:

From policy advisers to campaign strategists, more than two dozen veterans of the Bush administration have flocked to Romney's campaign....

Romney's chief political strategists, Russ Schriefer and Stuart Stevens, are veterans of both Bush-Cheney campaigns. Romney campaign adviser Kevin Madden was a spokesman for the Bush-Cheney effort in 2004, then was a spokesman for Bush's Justice Department.

Romney's economic advisers include Glenn Hubbard, architect of the Bush-era tax cuts as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers and now dean of the Columbia University Graduate School of Business. He's joined by Harvard's N. Gregory Mankiw, author of a popular economics textbook and Bush's primary economic adviser from 2003 to 2005.

Romney has named 24 "special advisers" in national security and foreign policy, 16 of whom served in diplomatic or political roles under Bush. They include Michael Chertoff, the former homeland security chief, and Dan Senor, who was an administration spokesman in Iraq.

On judicial issues, Romney is advised by at least three top veterans of Bush's Justice Department.

Romney's education advisers include Margaret Spellings, who was secretary of education under Bush....

And:

Rival campaigns complain that Karl Rove, Bush's lead strategist, has turned his prominent media perch into a position to attack Romney's challengers.

Last week, Bush's mother, Barbara, a former first lady, called for a quick end to the bruising Republican primary battle to improve Romney's chances of being elected in November.

Their enthusiasm for Romney may be rooted in the respect he has shown Bush's administration in choosing his advisers, some leading Republicans said....

The Reuters story focuses on the fact that Romney is campaigning against a number of Bush policies -- No Child Left Behind, the Medicare prescription drug plan -- despite being surrounded by Bushies. I don't see the relevance -- those are policies that the Bush administration put forward as an effort to co-opt the center, not out of any real ideological commitment.

The parade of Bush retreads tells us that even if a Romney administration didn't go all Scott Walker/Rick Scott on us, it would probably return us to the worst days of Bush-style regulatory indifference and foreign interventionism for the hell of it, with (if it's even possible to imagine it) an uptick in coddling of the rich and maybe a healthy dose of culture war. Nostalgic for the last decade? Sit on your hands on Election Day and you may get four years of insta-nostalgia.