Totally unsurprising to me that the right is going ape over this. Bush is still "on the team" regardless of his failures, and in a party that worships cultural identity over all else there is no greater sin that disrespecting that identity, or those who embody it. As the former head of the GOP, Bush really is untouchable for these people, no matter how ridiculous defending him might be.
This just makes me think, though, of how screwed the right really is. Not for 2010 per se, but further down the line. In 2010, the GOP will face an election leaderless and will be able to play to local issues (or not) in that election without having to be held accountable for what their leadership is saying. In 2012, though, the GOP is going to choose someone to lead them into the election. This person is going to be asked questions about the Iraq War and Bush, among other things, and these answers will be binding in elections across the land. That is when Republicans will be screwed. The electorate and the Republican Party are at such cross-messages here that I suspect any Republican nominee will wind up not being able to talk about this stuff to the electorate's satisfaction, and will wind up going the way of McCain. The idea of Romney in particular trying desperately to double-talk his way out of his health care record in MA, or defending Bush's record, strikes me as inevitable poetic justice for a man who seems to think he can talk his way out of anything.
