Over at Century of the Common Iowan, Noneed4thneed put up a video clip of David Brooks talking about how Republicans privately can't stand Bush, think he's incompetent, blame him for destroying the party and so on.

I don't doubt that this is true. They were happy to puff up Bush and smear his detractors when his approval ratings were high, but now that he's been below 40 percent for almost two years, he is a little embarrassing. Even the White House has given up on salvaging Bush's presidency (at least that's how I interpret Karl Rove's departure to work on other GOP projects).

So far Republican presidential candidates have mainly criticized the Bush administration on immigration policy. I was expecting some second-tier candidate other than Ron Paul to start calling for bringing our troops home from Iraq (using a soft-racist line like, “We've done all we can for those people”), but that hasn't materialized.

Newt Gingrich, who isn't running yet and probably won't run unless Fred Thompson tanks, is the only Republican besides Paul who has really harsh words for the Bush administration.

Mike Huckabee was on The Colbert Report tonight, and when Stephen asked him his signature question (“George W. Bush: great president, or the greatest president?”), Huckabee said Bush will rank right up there with McKinley and Harding, adding that Bush's presidency “will be a historic moment in time.”

Subtle, and only delivered to Colbert's liberal audience for now.

Is this the start of a new Huckabee strategy to depict Bush as one of our country's more inept presidents, presiding over rampant corruption and inequality?

If so, could this possibly be a winning strategy on the GOP side? Or would it put Huckabee out of the running for VP as well as the top of the ticket?

Or am I reading too much into all of this?

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