New Republican slogan, translated: 'Please forget about Bush'

So Republicans are unveiling a new anti-Obama slogan, and boy oh boy, is it ever a clunker:

The Republican National Committee, in conjunction with Mitt Romney's campaign, on Thursday unveiled a new slogan ahead of President Obama's official campaign kick-off in Ohio and Virginia this weekend: "Hype and Blame 2012."

The message plays off the hope and change mantra of Obama's 2008 presidential campaign and centers on what Republicans perceive as the president's chronic inability to keep his promises.

'The candidate of hope and change has become the president of hype and blame,' said RNC Chairman Reince Priebus in a conference call with reporters. 'He blames everyone and everything other than the man in the mirror. '
 

To anyone with a halfway-decent memory, the slogan is an obvious attempt to attack Obama on the two areas where Republicans are weakest: the fact that they failed to take out Osama bin Laden and the fact that they presided over the biggest economic crisis since the Great Depression.

They want Americans to think it's nothing but "hype" when President Obama's campaign reminds voters that he was right and Mitt Romney was wrong about how to get bin Laden, and they want Americans to think it's nothing but the "blame game" when President Obama's campaign reminds voters that he inherited a devastating recession from the Bush administration. But when the Obama campaign points out those facts, it isn't just hype, and it isn't just blame: it's reality.

The truth is that we're still recovering from the most devastating presidency in modern American history. You cannot talk about where we are now without thinking about where we were just three years ago. We haven't yet fully recovered, but America is in better shape today than it was when after Bush left office and things are going to keep on getting better. And pointing that out isn't finger pointing: it's making the case for continuing to move forward.