Poll suggests Republicans would be better off with Bush

Mitt's even less popular than W. Republicans have managed the impossible'they've nominated a candidate even less popular than George W. Bush:

For all the talk about whether Mitt Romney should distance himself from George W. Bush 'and the policies of the last GOP White House ' a new survey shows that the former president actually has better favorability ratings than the Republican nominee.

A Bloomberg News National Poll released Wednesday has Bush receiving a favorable rating from 46 percent of those surveyed and an unfavorable rating from 49 percent. That's compared to Romney's 43 percent favorable and 50 percent unfavorable.

As Alex Seitz-Wald notes, this is especially delicious in light of the aggressive effort by Romneyland to divorce Bush from the GOP during the Republican National Convention. It turns out they were probably doing Bush a favor'not the other way around.

If there's a silver lining in the poll for Romney, it's this: as unpopular as he is, the Republican Party is even more unpopular. To be fair, it's pretty close: Romney's net favorable rating is negative seven and the GOP's is negative eight. Still, I guess that's an answer to the question of which is worse: the guy who derisively writes off 47 percent of Americans as worthless moochers ... or the party who nominates him.