The "Bush Is Reagan" Ads Begin

by Steve

Reagan's funeral has been over less than a week, and the Bush campaign, through Stephen Moore's Club for Growth, is already running ads starting today with the "Bush is Reagan" theme, while attacking John Kerry. The ads, which use Reagan's likeness without Nancy Reagan's permission, assert that Reagan's fight against communism and Bush's fight against terrorism were similar, and those images are then contrasted with John Kerry's congressional testimony after his Vietnam war service, a combat experience that both Reagan and Bush avoided.

Stephen Moore, Larry Kudlow, Brent Bozell, and Arthur Laffer are just some of the folks behind the Club for Growth, all Reagan worshippers who go after fellow Republicans like Arlen Specter if they feel someone is not conservative enough. Few if any of these guys ever saw combat.

Don't hold your breath waiting for the White House to order Club for Growth to stop running these ads. It should have been obvious to anyone who knew Rove that once he focus-group tested a "Bush is Reagan" ad and saw how poorly received it would be, he would simply have a Bush surrogate organization do the ads instead, thereby giving the White House at least a degree of separation from such craveness. This is what Rove did in the 2000 race as well, when radio ads were run in South Carolina smearing John McCain and his family by a supporter with ties to Bush and Rove after Rove decided that the ads couldn't be run directly by the campaign.