A defeated George W. Bush pulling a Grover Cleveland in 2008?

If a mere 60,000 people who voted for Bush in 2004 in Ohio voted for Kerry instead, John Kerry would have won the election while losing the popular vote. As Bush would still have a narrow majority of the popular vote, and is leaving office fairly popular, could he avoid the "loser" stigma and come back to win the 2008 Republican nomination? I can't imagine Kerry would be able to stop the economic crash, especially since no significant policy changes could get through the Republican congress. With the economy crashed, might George W. Bush win a second, non-consecutive term in 2008?
 
Bush might still be viewed as relatively controversial, and IRL he's just retired in 2009 after leaving office. I doubt he would want to do it himself and I think the party would want to turn a new leaf.

Certainly, that leaves the 2012 election as a fascinating one, especially if some sort of parallel to the ACA (Social Security privatization?) occurs.
 
With the exception of a brief post-election bump, George W. Bush's approval/disapproval ratings were essentially neutral by the end of 2004, and I doubt they would have improved after four years of playing golf.

I agree that an incumbent President Kerry is going to be vulnerable in 2008, but I don't see Dubya as a viable candidate with those numbers. As a point of comparison, John McCain's approval/disapproval numbers were 67% approve, 27% disapprove (+40) during the 2008 primary season.

So my guess is that the Republican party insiders are going to very gently suggest to Dubya that he sit out 2008.
 
This is very possible. Since there was no stimulus package, the economy is worse and in 2012 the Republican loses. Since Bush was not president during Katrina and for only a year and a half of the Iraq war, he is much more popular.
 
This goes against both George Bush's personality, and basic political common sense, if you stop to think about the situation in the round for a moment.

If there is any Bush nostalgia come 2008 then the frontman for that would be Jeb, not a defeated Dubya.
 
If there is any Bush nostalgia come 2008 then the frontman for that would be Jeb, not a defeated Dubya.

Yeah, and at that I doubt there would be -- Republicans are going to be looking for a genuine "unifier" in this kind of scenario.

My guess -- since the GOP will be doing so much better overall in 2006, Mitt Romney decides to run for re-election, which means he embraces Romneycare et el all the more -- then he runs, and does better, in the 2008 Presidential Race, quite plausibly winning as a Moderate Republican.
 
We haven't had a person get the nomination of a major party again after being defeated in the top slot, for whatever reason, since Nixon in 1968 (and before that, one has to go back to 1956 and the second run of Adlai Stevenson).

The 'loser' tag that is so forcefully stuck by both the media and by party insiders is a mighty hard hill to climb. Not impossible. But pretty darn hard.

Let's take Gore for an example. He came within 538 votes and an incredibly bitter court fight of getting the presidency in 2000. Under this idea, he should have been a natural for getting consideration for the nomination again in 2004. Except almost no one in the party wanted anything to do with him at the time.

IMO in 2004 he would have had a tremendously hard time getting the nomination if he had sought it. There was a large sized block of Democrats who blamed the loss in 2000 on his ineffectual campaigning. A sense that he threw away a sure thing as it were. Sure, the Blame Nader faction always got the most attention (unreasonably, IMO). But the movers and shakers of the party? They were pissed at Gore at the time.

By 2007/8 he had more or less rehabilitated his image (his green crusade during the decade certainly helped in this regard) but by then there was a sense that his day had come and passed. Maybe he could have gotten the nomination by then, as his standing in the party had rebounded. But there simply wasn't room in the field for him. But perhaps in a TL with no Hillary Clinton and no Barack Obama, there could be a chance at him getting the nom.

A similar dynamic could envelope Dubya. There would be the noises that Bush had what would be perceived to be a slam dunk win and he let it slip through his fingers for whatever reasons could be imagined. Look at the current character assassination of Mitt Romney to see what I am talking about (though Mitt certainly isn't helping his own cause :p). I can easily imagine the same thing happening as Republicans look for someone to blame for their loss.

By the time early-/mid-2007 rolls around (which is when the election season gets started in ernest) could George W Bush have repaired the damage enough to mount a serious run? Maybe. But the economy hasn't crashed yet (though there were plenty of warning signs) so he can't play that card.

It is possible I suppose. But he's either gonna have to lay the ground work around 2006 or so or fight a lot of institutional forces that may be lining up against him.
 
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With Bush out of Office we likely still have in the Senate:

  • Jim Talent
  • Conrad Burns
  • Lincoln Chafee
  • George Allen
On top of that you might have Kean beat Mendendez in New Jersey given the latter can no longer effectively tie Kean to Bush, given he is no longer in office. However the Republicans would still lose a seat, putting it at (54-46); Santorum and DeWine were for the most part doomed given either their scandals or their methods, apart from the margins in which they were rejected.

House should have experienced some Republican gains.

Allen and Chafee might run for the Presidency, as well as Bill Frist who had originally intended to do so.
 
With Bush out of Office we likely still have in the Senate:

  • Jim Talent
  • Conrad Burns
  • Lincoln Chafee
  • George Allen
On top of that you might have Kean beat Mendendez in New Jersey given the latter can no longer effectively tie Kean to Bush, given he is no longer in office. However the Republicans would still lose a seat, putting it at (54-46); Santorum and DeWine were for the most part doomed given either their scandals or their methods, apart from the margins in which they were rejected.

House should have experienced some Republican gains.

Allen and Chafee might run for the Presidency, as well as Bill Frist who had originally intended to do so.

It's possible that in this scenario Michael Steele narrowly wins his Senate race.
 
It's possible that in this scenario Michael Steele narrowly wins his Senate race.
Actually yes, he might indeed have. Despite the controversies, Cardin's main line of attack against Steele was to tie him to George Bush, which he would not be able to do here.
 

d32123

Banned
Not gonna happen, totally out of character. He likely would have just retired to his ranch. His brother might have a go at 2008 though if Bushstalgia is high enough.
 
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