Thursday, January 24, 2008

Coming Soon To A Theater Near You, Ten Things I Hate About You: President's Cut

We're coming to you today from the Coals to Newcastle Department here in the marbled halls of IM Central. CtN is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Selling Refrigerators to Eskimos Corporation.

A liberal advocacy group plans to spend $8.5 million in a drive to make sure president Bush's public approval doesn't improve as his days in the White House thankfully come to an end. "This guy's been a steaming pile of Bull's nasty since he took office," said Brad Woodhouse, president of the group. "We figure the odds are he's way over due to do something right so we want to keep people focused on the big picture."

Americans Desiring Competence plans to undertake a yearlong campaign, spending the bulk of the money on advertising, to keep public attention on what the group says are the failures of the Bush administration. "Couldn't you just rely on the news to do that?" asked one reporter.

"The news only reports Bush's most recent failure," Woodhouse replied.

The group plans to announce the campaign at a press conference during a forum featuring rational human beings. It also aims to air its first ad in advance of Bush's State of the Union speech. "We were thinking about just running a list of all the policy failures, botched programs, bad decisions, and muffed opportunities, but when we got that ad together it was an hour and twenty minutes long, so we had to go back to the drawing board," Woodhouse said.

"Framing his legacy helps us in the '08 elections, there is no doubt about that," Woodhouse said. "But our principal mission would be defining the failures of Bush and the ideology he represents." Several reporters in the group expressed confusion, being unaware that Bush had an ideology. "We figured anyone that inept had to be just winging it," one commented.

Looking to test Bush support within the GOP, Americans United is distributing "I am a Bush Republican" buttons to Republican members of Congress before the State of the Union address. "Oh, yeah, I'll wear that," said one republican senator who asked not to be named. "Right after I shave my head and paint my butt blue."

Woodhouse also plans to unveil a bus that will travel the country carrying an exhibit that portrays Bush's tenure in office — mementos from Iraq and flood ravaged New Orleans as well as symbols of the economic downturn. "We're calling it the 'What do you think of me now' tour and we're going to stop in all the states that voted for Bush in the last election, well at least the ones where people can read."

Republican presidential candidates are hardly embracing Bush, and many are echoing calls from Democrats for change in Washington. "As long as people don't realize we've been Washington for the last eight years, I think we'll be OK, said one republican strategist.

But an anti-Bush campaign will likely be overshadowed by the presidential campaign. Most analysts expect hundreds of millions of dollars will be spent by the candidates and by outside groups this year. "They've got a bus full of failures? We've got a train," said a spokesperson for one leading democratic candidate.

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