Well its all coming down to Texas vs Taxes.

And this year Americans will be going for 'Taxes', 'lower taxes', that is. Out with Bush from Texas, and in with Lower Taxes. Wish it didn't have to just be that - but we don't look gift horses in the mouth.

What I would have really loved though, would have been if things could have been rolled back in the following order:

1. Americans had voted Al Gore in with a resounding majority in 2000, because they could see the real thing.
2. Gore would not have been left hanging with the chads in FL in 2000.
3. Failing that, the Supreme court had sided with Al Gore in Bush v. Gore in 2000.
4. Pre-9-11 Bush had taken the Clinton admin briefing on Al-Quaeda threats, read the August Intelligence briefing on the same, and along the way stuck to his principles of Compassionate Conservatism and not splurged the Clinton surplus on unneeded tax rebates for the wealthy, and Social Security privatization efforts...
5. Immediate post-911, Bush had not taken the "let's see if we can squeeze out an Iraq war out of this 9-11 tragedy" stand
6. Congress had not gotten hoodwinked by Bush and given him via the AUMF what he thought was a carte blanche on War, but what they thought was merely the power to make growling noises to threaten the other side with war.
7. Colin Powell and the CIA had not gotten hoodwinked by Bush and cheney into placing all risks of misrepresentation about the war into little asterisked footnotes in their UN and Intelligence reports. (which footnotes were ignored the very same way as the American people refused to read the footnotes on the IPO and hedgefund and sub-prime mortgage offerings from Wall Street - same modus operandi as used by the 3-card monte scam artists you find in any urban back alley!!)
8. Members of Congress had the gumption to call Bush on his overstepping the authority granted by their AUMF when he did go to war.
9. Members of the Congress had the gumption to impeach Bush for war crimes that were beginning to be committed in their name.
10. The Dems had a better candidate to offer the country in 2004 (McCain was correct - wish Obama could have run in 2004!)
11. The country could have seen that only the Devil's side would swift-boat a real war hero like Kerry.
12. The country would have spurned Bush unequivocally in 2004, knowing he took us to war on FALSE PRETENSES, against a country that did us no harm, killed half a million people (both US soldiers, and coalition soldiers and Iraqi civilians), displaced another few million ordinary Iraqis, all in ever-changing reasons to go to war (Al-Q, WMD, democracy, ME chaos...). That would be the Pro-Life stance!
13. In 2008, when Obama eventually ran on an anti-dumb-war, pro-people, pro-economy platform, people would without pre-condition flock to his anti-war message.

But the Lower Taxes message resonated.

Yes $1000 saving in annual taxes to your pocket resonates far louder today than all the other tugs to American heartstrings and pursestrings and sense of fairness and logic and outrage and...!

Why am I not surprised???