A little 80s flashback…

This time two years ago, George Bush was still on vacation.  If you haven’t seen it, do take a little while to watch the David Shuster review of Bush’s very bad week.  (H/T to C&L.)  And Dan Balz has this to say in the WaPo:

From the intoxicating heights of President Bush’s 2004 reelection victory, the GOP has fallen into a state of disrepair that rivals the party’s low ebb after Watergate in the 1970s. In some ways, conditions may be worse today than they were then.

Whoever leads the party into the 2008 general election will be saddled with responsibility for charting a vision that offers independent voters a credible break from the record of the past few years while reenergizing a conservative coalition that has been vital to the party’s achievements.

The party’s political success over the past three decades was built by assembling a conservative coalition based on economic, security and moral issues. Consider the ways in which Republicans have surrendered the high ground on all three.

Or, how about this, Dan? The GOP’s political success was built on smoke and mirrors — and lying to the people for whom the issues you list actually mean something in order to gain the one thing that mattered: power. But for those for whom power is the biggest motivation, the corrupted core is eventually exposed for the fetid turdblossom that it is.

Grand old party, indeed.  The difference today from where we were in 2004?  A helluva lot more people see the tiny man behind the curtain for the freak show he’s leading the nation on down the yellow brick road paved with brick upon brick of failure.

(And if you have an 80s video you’d like to share, please do so in the comments.  We could all use a bit of a break today, couldn’t we?)