"Unlikely"? I'll say. From the piece (all emphasis mine):
After eight years of largely abstaining from politics, former President George W. Bush is throwing himself into an effort to save his party’s most vulnerable senators, including several whose re-election campaigns have been made more difficult by Donald J. Trump’s presence at the top of the ticket.
In the weeks since Mr. Trump emerged as the party’s presumptive presidential nominee, Mr. Bush has headlined fund-raisers for two Republican senators and has made plans to help three more.
Am I missing something here? Is Mr. Bush supposed to remind voters of how peachy things were when he was in office?
The support from Mr. Bush also reflects his rising standing. He was toxic to his own party in the final years of his presidency and left the White House deeply unpopular after two wars and a financial collapse that plunged the nation into recession.
Oh, yeah, that.
But 47 percent of people nationally view him favorably now, according to a February poll from Quinnipiac University.
I guess that's about how many people vote Republican in presidential elections.
Further, Mr. Bush is highly popular among Republicans,* especially the party elites who are big campaign donors.
How can that be? Is it the "two wars and a financial collapse" that they remember so fondly? Or was it the events of 9/11? Was it torture? How about the tax cuts for the rich that squandered the Clinton surpluses and resulted in record peacetime budget deficits? Or was it the botched reaction to Hurricane Katrina? The mediocre economy (even before the Crash)? Someone -- please -- tell me: what on earth would make anyone nostalgic for the Bush years?
I'm telling you: we live in different realities.
* My sister tried to tell me recently how wonderful W. was. Apparently, he "brought us together after 9/11." Huh?
(Obama, meanwhile, was "responsible" for the four Americans who died on his watch in Benghazi. Sheesh!)
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