Congressional Republicans are apparently starting to think they should separate themselves from the grossly unpopular George W. Bush. John McCain, it seems, is thinking much the same thing.

This all goes back to the weird decision-making of the congressional Republicans in November 2006 through February 2007. After the spanking the GOP took in the midterms, conventional wisdom held that congressional Republicans would tell Bush that either he was going to embrace Baker-Hamilton and moves toward winding-up the Iraq War, or else he was going to face mass defections. The shrill blogger set, reading recent history, accurately predicted that no such thing would happen and we were right. But the Republicans' determination to behave this way is still odd. And now John McCain's running for President and he is different from Bush in some respects and is now wisely trying to emphasize those points of difference, but on the key driving factor of the rise and fall of Bushism -- national security policy -- McCain is more Bushite than Bush and wants to resolve the problems with our current approach to the world by banging the table much harder.