The group called Americans United For Change has plans to spend $8.5 million dollars in a drive aimed to make sure that President George W. Bush’s public approval rating does not improve as his final days in the White House gets closer.
This campaign will be a yearlong campaign. Most of the money will be spent on advertising to maintain public attention on what the group deems as failures of the George W. Bush administration such as Hurricane Katrina, Iraq, and the mortgage crisis.
To sell the plan to fundraisers, they argue that support for President Ronald Reagan was at a low of 42 percent in 1987. Before leaving office, Reagan’s approval rating went up to 63 percent.
“All of a sudden he became a rallying cry for conservatives and their ideology,” said the group’s president, Brad Woodhouse. He adds: “Progressives are still living with that.”
This nonprofit group made a major storm by airing ads against Bush’s plans to overhaul the Social Security system back in 2005. Last week, the group has given Power Point presentations to at least 30 liberal and labor organizations.
The group aims to air the first ad before Bush’s Monday night State of the Union speech.
Woodhouse says that one of the goals is to ensure that George W. Bush does not enjoy resurgence in public approval towards the end that could possibly help the GOP candidates and the eventual nominee in the 2008 elections.
“Framing his legacy helps us in the ’08 elections, there is no doubt about that,” Woodhouse had said. He adds: “But our principal mission would be defining the failures of Bush and the ideology he represents.”
According to a poll conducted this month, Bush’s approval rating is at 34 percent.
The only things GOP candidates have embraced so far about Bush would be the policy in Iraq.
Americans United are looking to test Bush’s support as they are distributing buttons to Republican members of Congress that say “I am a Bush Republican” before George W. Bush’s State of the Union address.
Woodhouse had also revealed plans to use a bus that will travel the country carrying an exhibit that portrays Bush’s time in office. The bus will have mementos from Iraq and the flooded New Orleans.
The effort was dismissed by the Republican National Committee.
“Why would liberals want to spend good money re-fighting the battles they lost yesterday?” asked Alex Conant, RNC spokesman. Conant added: “Those backward-looking tactics didn’t work in 2000 and 2004, and they won’t work now. The 2008 election will be about the future and which candidate is best able to lead during a time of war and economic challenge.”
So far, Bush’s approval ratings have been at the same lows for over a year.
It would be most likely that an anti-Bush campaign such as this would be overshadowed by the presidential campaign.