Guess who said this:

I don’t think it’s the job of the United States to export our form of government. It’s the job of the United States to protect our citizens, to secure our own borders, which we have failed to do for over 20 years. It’s the job of our government to make us free and us safe…I don’t think we can force people to accept our way of life, our way of government. What we can to is to create the strongest America: change our tax system, make it so that people are healthier, create the enviable education system on this planet, make sure that jobs come back to this country rather than disappear from this country…That makes a whole lot more sense to me than spending billions and billions and billions of dollars to try to prop up some government we don’t even like when we get it.

A Democrat? Guess again. Try GOP prez contender Mike Huckabee, a conservative who is typically observed throwing red meat to the religious right. Perhaps the tide is beginning to turn, with Republican hopefuls beginning to learn the harsh lesson of John McCain and begin now to distance themselves from Bush.

But Dick Polman writes, "If these guys are talking this way about Bush now, even while attempting to woo Republican primary voters, imagine what the putative nominee will sound like next spring, when it’s time to woo the independent swing voters who have already judged Bush to be an irreparable disaster." I've written many times before that when the eventual GOP nominee must reverse course and renounce all of his pro-Bush statements in attempt to win over mainstream America, it will ring hollow and false. To nail down the party nomination too much will have been said in support of GW and the country will simply not have the stomach for someone who even remotely offers a hint that we'll have to suffer through four more years of this nightmare. To that end, the GOP has no shot at the White House in 2008.