If You Liked Bush, You’ll Love Romney

missbush

A signal has apparently gone out among the Bush family and faithful: Line up behind Romney!

Recently, former Gov. Jeb Bush, former Pres. George H.W. Bush, and his wife, Barbara, publicly endorsed the Mormon. The admiration is mutual, according to Reuters, since Romney is relying on members of Pres. George W. Bush’s administration to advise him on national security and foreign policy.

If the rest of the Republican party hoped for more in the way of a candidate this year, the Bush folks couldn’t be happier.

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 a chief advocate for No Child Left Behind….

Privately, they believe that…a Romney presidency could have a look much like Bush’s presidency.

Romney’s campaign is “a restoration of the Bush establishment,” said former Bush speechwriter Matt Lattimer, who is not supporting Romney. Bush loyalists “all want to be back in power again, and Romney’s the best bet.”

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Current TV Adds New Shows from Bill Press and Stephanie Miller to Morning Line-up

Bill Press and Stephanie Miller, now on Current TV in the morning
Bill Press and Stephanie Miller, now on Current TV in the morning

If you’re up early and want political news and discussion on the teevee, but you can’t stomach MSNBC’s Fox News-lite Joe Scarborough show and you find C-SPAN’s “Washington Journal” to be just too dry, there is a new alternative.

Current TV has begun running televised simulcasts of long-running radio chat shows hosted by Bill Press, weekday mornings at 6 a.m. Eastern/3 a.m. Pacific, and Stephanie Miller, from 9 a.m. Eastern/6 a.m. Pacific.

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Let the Santorum Campaign Postmortems Begin

Sam Stein and Jason Cherkis at Huffington Post blame Rick Santorum’s failures in the 2012 Republican primaries on the fact that he learned nothing from the 18-point loss he suffered in his campaign for reelection to the Senate in 2006:

Interviews with more than a dozen former aides, adversaries, and close observers of the ‘06 contest, however, show that important lessons — about the need to stay on message, convey warmth to voters and appear less patronizing — haven’t been learned at all. The senator who stumbled so badly six years ago, many say, is the same candidate now locked in a hotly-contested race for the Republican presidential nomination: pugnacious and unscripted, talented at retail politics, but often his own worst enemy.

But this leaves out the fact that Rick Santorum never had a chance at becoming president because he is a narrow-minded jerk and a bully who is not intellectually or temperamentally suited for high office. It took Pennsylvania voters 12 years — the two terms he served in the Senate — to figure that out. A new Qunnipiac poll out yesterday finds that while Pres. Obama and Mitt Romney are virtually tied in Pennsylvania, 45 to 42 percent, the president beats native son Santorum, 48 to 41 percent.

Trayvon Martin and the Fifth Anniversary of the Murder of Ryan Skipper

Lynn Mulder, center, standing between her sons, Damien Skipper, left, and Ryan Skipper
Lynn Mulder, center, standing between her sons, Damien Skipper, left, and Ryan Skipper
As details have come to light about the murder of Trayvon Martin last month in Sanford, Fla., the questions being raised about police conduct in the case bring to mind the way police in Polk County, Fla., which is about 75 miles southeast of Sanford, handled the case of Ryan Skipper who was murdered there five years ago this month.

Except for the fact that both murders were senseless and tragic, and both crimes took down young men who should have had long and promising lives ahead of them, the circumstances around the murders diverge. Ryan was robbed, stabbed 20 times by a pair of crazed meth heads who left him to die on a dirt road near Wahneta. Trayvon was allegedly stalked inside the grounds of a gated community by an over-zealous and seemingly paranoiac community watch volunteer who shot him apparently during a struggle.

There are striking parallels, however. Both cases involved some sketchy police conduct, the murders both occurred in Central Florida and both victims were young and members of minority groups. Trayvon Martin was 17 and African-American, and Ryan Skipper was 25 and gay.

It took a month or so for the Martin case to gain attention, and now it has become a firestorm. In the Skipper case, the shock was immediate, but because of the way Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd characterized the case in his first news conference, interest in it in the national media fizzled over night.

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