Republicans have recently been in the process of turning against the Bush administration. Seeing as how the Bush White House has screwed up so badly over time and has now become so universally unpopular, they are turning to campaign against Bush so as to curry favor with voters. They hope to dress themselves up as outsiders, as though they were never married at the hip to the Bush administration and their failures. The Prince of Darkness, Bob Novak, wrote:

The I-word (incompetence) is also used by Republicans in describing the Bush administration generally. Several of them I talked to cited a trifecta of incompetence: the Walter Reed hospital scandal, the FBI’s misuse of the USA Patriot Act and the U.S. attorneys firing fiasco. “We always have claimed that we were the party of better management,” one House leader told me. “How can we claim that anymore?”

The key response to this would be “too little, too late.” The Republicans in Congress have enthusiastically backed Bush’s failures from day one; it’s not as if Walter Reed, the FBI & the Patriot Act, and the USA firings are the very first signs of incompetence from the White House. There is a long, long history of this.

While Democrats justly deserve blame for not providing strong enough opposition, Republicans apparently hope that nobody will remember that they themselves were full accomplices to Bush’s policies, often vociferously so. The Iraq War is a good example. Democrats have been blamed for “letting it happen,” but Bush was the architect and congressional Republicans backed him nearly 100%. While 60% of Senate Democrats and 40% of Democrats in the House voted for the Iraq war powers resolution, 98% of Republicans in both the House and Senate voted for it.

But Iraq wasn’t the only unified GOP failure. Republicans have rubber-stamped and tried to ram through virtually everything Bush proposed over the past six years. Push through the “Patriot” Act? Behind Bush blindly all the way. Massive and successive tax cuts for the wealthy and for profit-flush corporations? We’ve got your back, George! Trash Medicare and dismantle Social Security? We’ve got some reservations, but if you want it, we’re behind you! Stack the courts with extremists? We’re with you 100%, and will use the nuclear option on Democrats if they resist even a little! Pass legislation that favors the banking & credit, energy, and pharmaceutical industries at the expense of the American people? You bet! Switch off Ethics reviews and refuse to investigate even the most blatant crimes committed by the Bush White House? Nod and a wink, Georgie, and keep it up! All you have to do, Mr. President, is keep signing our unprecedented porkbarrel hogfest, and we’ll keep backing you all the way on whatever you send to us to do!

But now that Bush is in the doghouse and Democrats have resuscitated oversight, suddenly Republicans are calling Bush “incompetent” and shaking their heads in disbelief–as if they weren’t just as guilty as Bush for having created this mess from the beginning. Even more so, as if they are not still backing Bush on almost every issue!

Yes, that’s right–Bush, lame duck he is, is now the new fall guy for the entire Republican Party, even as the GOP still stands behind him on almost everything. The Republicans are apparently hoping that as Bush leaves office, they can successfully put all the blame on him and act as if they were somehow against him all the time. Quite a juggling act when you continue to agree with his agenda and try to block investigations of him.

Will the American people buy such an incredibly fake act? Well, considering how many Americans still believe that Saddam Hussein had a hand in the 9/11 attacks, it’s not such a long shot that many will believe the GOP’s all-new play-acting.