Did the Senate Minority Leader just say he’ll be happy to see Bush go?

A top Republican said on Friday that Democratic U.S. President-elect Barack Obama is “off to a good start” and indicated he was pleased to see President George W. Bush get ready to leave.

“Our members, in one way, are kind of relieved by the departure of an administration that became unpopular and made it very difficult for us to compete,” Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell told reporters on Capitol Hill.

McConnell won 52.9 percent of the votes over Democratic challenger Bruce Lunsford in a surprisingly (to McConnell) competitive re-election campaign. Had he lost, it sounds like McConnell would have blamed it all on Bush, the man who employs McConnell’s wife, U.S. Labor Secretary Elaine Chao. McConnell has also been at Bush’s side on Iraq, cheering on the alleged progress that showed victory was just around the corner every year since he backed Bush’s ill-fated plan to invade.

Candace Gringrich

Only someone who really knows you can totally nail why you’re wrong, wrong, wrong. Newt Gingrich’s half-sister Candace does just that as she lets her big (and we mean big) half-brother know why his position on gay rights sucks.

Dear Newt,

I recently had the displeasure of watching you bash the protestors of the Prop 8 marriage ban to Bill O’Reilly on FOX News. I must say, after years of watching you build your career by stirring up the fears and prejudices of the far right, I feel compelled to use the words of your idol, Ronald Reagan, “There you go, again.”

However, I realize that you may have been a little preoccupied lately with planning your resurrection as the savior of your party, so I thought I would fill you in on a few important developments you might have overlooked.

“You give a pass to a religious group when they use their money and membership roles to roll back the rights of others, and then you label us ‘fascists’ when we fight back”

The truth is that you’re living in a world that no longer exists. I, along with millions of Americans, clearly see the world the way it as — and we embrace what it can be. You, on the other hand, seem incapable of looking for new ideas or moving beyond what worked in the past.

Welcome to the 21st century, big bro. I can understand why you’re so afraid of the energy that has been unleashed after gay and lesbian couples had their rights stripped away from them by a hateful campaign. I can see why you’re sounding the alarm against the activists who use all the latest tech tools to build these rallies from the ground up in cities across the country.

This unstoppable progress has at its core a group we at HRC call Generation Equality. They are the most supportive of full LGBT equality than any American generation ever — and when it comes to the politics of division, well, they don’t roll that way. 18-24 year olds voted overwhelmingly against Prop 8 and overwhelmingly for Barack Obama. And the numbers of young progressive voters will only continue to grow. According to the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning, about 23 million 18-29 year olds voted on Nov. 4, 2008 — the most young voters ever to cast a ballot in a presidential election. That’s an increase of 3 million more voters compared to 2004.

[…]

A stunning 30 percent of Floridians approve of the job Pres. Bush is doing, according to a new Quinnipiac University poll. That blows FOX News’ 29 percent and Quinnipiac’s own 23 percent national ratings out of the water.

Oddly, Bush handmaiden Sen. Mel Martinez (R-Fla.), who comes up for re-election in 2010, is only slightly more popular in the state than the Republicans’ standard bearer.

Although Sen. Martinez gets a somewhat favorable job approval rating, only 36 percent of voters say he deserves another term, while 38 percent say no and 26 percent say they are not sure. If the election were today, 36 percent say they would vote for Martinez while 40 percent would support his unnamed Democratic opponent and 24 percent are undecided.

Meanwhile, Rasmussen has given up on Bush altogether. Their “Daily Presidential Approval Index” lists only one set of numbers: those for Pres.-Elect Barack Obama. It’s as if Bush has ceased to exist. The poll show most folks think the Wish-He-Were-Pres.-Now is doing well. Rasmussen arrives at its index by subtracting the number of people who “strongly disapprove” from the number who “strongly approve.” By this measure, Obama has a +19 rating.

The Washington Post’s index shows that it was March of 2005, just two months after Bush’s second inauguration, that his “disapprove” numbers overtook his “approve” and never recovered. That’s a really long time for a country to have disliked its leader. No wonder Rasmussen, and most of us, are so eager for it to be over that we’re pretending Bush is already gone.