September 25, 2007	Tuesday	Ramazan 12, 1428

MACKINAC ISLAND (Michigan): Republican presidential candidates cannot be any clearer: President George Bush is not welcome on the campaign trail.

Competing to succeed him, top Republican candidates Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney, Fred Thompson and John McCain barely utter Bush’s name. They essentially ignore president, or give him only passing credit, as they rail against the status quo and promise to fix problems he has not solved.

“We all know Americans want change,” said McCain, a senator, explaining the aversion to aligning with Bush. “I give him credit for a number of things but I think the fact is Americans are turning the page, including our Republican primary voters.”

The candidates are walking a fine line. They are trying to tap into the deep discontent those voters feel about the state of the country without alienating any who hold Bush in high regard. At the same time, they have to counter the Democrats’ powerful arguments for a new direction.

How candidates handle the Bush presidency now could have implications beyond the primary. Privately, Republican strategists agree their nominee will lose next fall if the general election is a referendum on Bush. They say Republican candidates are wise to distance themselves from the president now, given his unpopularity among the public at large.

Bush holds the opposite view.

Asked last week whether he is an asset or a liability for Republican candidates, Bush replied: “Strong asset.”

To be sure, none of the candidates want to be attached to Bush’s legacy, afraid that doing so will make them sitting ducks for Democrats.

Who can blame them? The unpopular Iraq war has bogged down Bush’s presidency. His party is in an uproar over out-of-control spending on his watch and embarrassing scandals among Republican officeholders. His job performance rating is at a low 33 per cent, according to a recent Associated Press-Ipsos poll. Only 28 per cent think the country is moving in the right direction. Half of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents think the country is on the wrong track.

Take Dan Wilson, 55, and Janet Frederick-Wilson, 47, of Westland, Michigan. The Republicans voted for Bush in 2000 and 2004, but they have lost confidence in him over the past few years for what Frederick-Wilson said were a million different reasons. “Overall, he’s lost touch,” she said.

“He’s kind of lost his way, unfortunately,” Wilson said. “He started strong and then his office affected him.”

Neither has settled on a candidate for 2008; both say they are looking for someone who can make them proud to be Americans again.

Despite such deep frustration, Republicans on the whole still like Bush — and do not like those who beat up on him.

That has prompted Republican hopefuls to tread delicately. They rattle off problems and propose solutions, seeking to make the case for change without going as far as to bash Bush, at least not openly.

The straddle — and the absence of Bush in the race — was apparent over the weekend as the four leading Republicans spoke to 1,500 Republican activists on an island in Lake Huron near Canada.

In separate speeches spanning two days, they repeatedly invoked beloved conservative Ronald Reagan; Bush was hardly mentioned.

All laid out challenges facing the country, from national security to immigration reform to health care, and argued they were the elixirs for what ails the Republican Party and the country. What little praise there was for Bush was muted by solemn assessments of the challenges ahead.

“Republicans for change,” declared Romney, the former Massachusetts governor who offered a blistering critique of the Republican Party. He argued that Republicans bore just as much of the blame as Democrats for failures in Washington, such as runaway spending and ethical lapses in his own party. He claimed he was best suited to lead dispirited Republicans in a new direction.

He gave Bush some praise for keeping the United States safe and restoring integrity to the White House. When pressed, Romney refused to lump Bush in with the very Republicans he was criticizing.

“I’m not pointing fingers,” Romney told reporters in one breath, only to say in the next: “We have strayed a little far from our principles and vision, and I think that’s happened over the last several years.”

McCain used his speech to channel Reagan, comparing the conservative behemoth who faced down the Soviet Union in the 1980s to his own calls for resolve in Iraq and against terrorists. Never once did McCain mention Bush, though he generally panned the president’s leadership, saying “the war in Iraq has not gone well”.

Giuliani skirted Bush entirely. He set up an us-against-them scenario with Democrats on just about every issue and argued the country would go backward, not forward, under their leadership. The former New York mayor received perhaps the heartiest applause with his lone direct reference to the president for enacting tax cuts in 2001 and 2003. Giuliani said they helped put more money back into the private sector.

As for Thompson, the former senator and actor painted a bleak picture of the future if changes are not made, particularly on the economic front, saying “we’re on an unsustainable path” and bemoaning the irresponsibility of leaders who have not solved looming issues though they have had years to do so.

“We’ve got to send a message to politicians in Washington that we are better than that,” Thompson said.—AP