Romney's an incompetent politician, but he's not an idiot. I don't think he's going to atttempt to defend one of the worst Presidents in the last hundred years by rehabilitating Bush's reputation.
He doesn't have to. Bush speaks all the time, hell he was on CNN last night. They just need to unleash Bush and let him defend his record and defend Republican values. I have watched Bush and Bill Clinton debate the issues in Canada at a forum and can say he is the only Republican with the statue and skill to get into a real debate with Clinton who is Obama's biggest surrogate and stand toe to toe with Clinton when arguing over a certain issue.
Bush has higher favorability ratings then Romney and I watched Bush's favorable ratings when he was going on a press tour for his book. They shot up nearly 10% in very little time.
The thing Republicans fail to realize and/or forgotten about is that George W Bush can be amazingly effective at winning over Latino voters and mainstream Americans because he is able to connect to them on an emotional level when he tries to.
George W Bush is a far better campaigner and better at connecting to average Americans then Romney will ever be. Not that Romney is a bad politician, or that Bush can't make mistakes. But, the George W Bush is simply much better at winning over the average American when he wants to be then his father was or Romney currently is.
I like that it apparently hasn't occurred to you that the reason one of the most direly unpopular (
the most unpopular?) President since Dr. Gallup pioneered the art of polling has seen his favourablity ratings increase (not the same thing as thinking he was a good President, of course) is because he's stayed largely out of the public eye since leaving office so people aren't constantly remembering what an awful, awful mess he left the country in.
Romney's going to try to ignore Bush, and that's the right course of action for any half-way reasonable Republican campaign. At least the Nixon apologists had the decency to wait until he'd kicked the bucket.
