BUSH RESURGENT – AT 9:08 A.M. ET:  Ah, what a difference five years makes.   Some Americans of certain political persuasions used to laugh at a poster of George W. Bush asking, "Miss me yet?"  No one is laughing any longer.  Polls show that Bush is now more popular than Obama.  And some of Bush's associates are going with the flow.  From The Hill:

As George W. Bush's public image improves, more former Bush officials are running for office — and are starting to tout their connections to the former president rather than running from them.

Top former Bush advisor Ed Gillespie included photos with his old boss and talked of his work in the White House in the video announcing his Virginia Senate bid on Thursday.

Gillespie isn’t the only Bush alumnus looking to be on the ballot this fall. The former Republican National Committee chairman joins a long list already looking to launch their own electoral careers: Alaska Senate candidate Dan Sullivan (R); Elise Stefanik, the current GOP front-runner for retiring Rep. Bill Owens's (D-N.Y.) seat in upstate New York; North Carolina congressional candidate Taylor Griffin (R) and West Virginia House candidate Charlotte Lane (R).

Former Bush officials Tom Foley (R) and Asa Hutchinson (R) are also running for governor in Connecticut and Arkansas. Neel Kashkari, who served both the Bush and Obama administration as assistant Treasury secretary running the Troubled Asset Relief Program, is mulling a bid to the GOP nominee for governor in California. One of Gillespie’s little-known Republican primary opponents, Howie Lind, served in Bush’s Department of Defense.

COMMENT:  Is that another omen?  Are Americans now realizing that Bush was actually a pretty solid president, and that conservative principles have much to offer?

It is indeed another good sign.  The races will be tough this year.  Republicans must pick up six seats to take control of the U.S. Senate.  It's a tall order, but Senate races in Virginia and Michigan, states that have been trending Democratic, are now going into the "questionable" column.  That means that the Democrats will have to devote more resources to these races than they'd planned. 

One thing the national Republican planners are doing well is fighting for more and more states, more and more districts.  The idea of even being competitive in a Michigan Senate race was but a dream only a year ago.  And Colorado now looks competitive.  A private note from a good friend there informs me that probable GOP candidate Ken Buck, who lost a winnable race several years ago, has learned from his mistakes and is getting better and better as a candidate. 

As Sinatra might have said, leave us we should pray.

January 21, 2014