George W. Bush's failures are so dizzying in scale and scope that, ironically, plenty of Republicans still can't even make them out against the gloom-shrouded horizon. These are like the Republicans who wanted to re-elect Herbert Hoover in 1932, only much dumber.

At a time when Bush is often dismissed as a lame duck, the CPAC crowd, in open defiance of the 22nd Amendment, greeted him with a thunderous cheer of "Four more years."

Unable in their folly to admit that Bush has nearly destroyed the Republican Party, they're actually eager for more of the same. And if anybody can give them four more years of such folly, it is John McCain.

Eric Draper, AP file photo

The signs are all around us that the election of McCain this year would amount to a continuation of George W. Bush's reign for a further four years. Surrounded by neocon advisers, giddy at the prospect of further wars, hemmed in on all sides by his stubborn support for the most disastrous policies, McCain is increasingly indistinguishable from Bush.

The man even promises fellow Republicans a return during the general election to that hallmark of Bushism, the full-throated demonization of Democrats. Here are a few selections from McCain's speech at CPAC last week, where he sought to deflect attention from his own political weakness by lambasting Democrats. Who could have predicted it, he portrays Democrats as a veritable danger to the nation. This is indistinguishable from the rhetoric of George Bush.

It is shameful and dangerous that Senate Democrats are blocking an extension of surveillance powers that enable our intelligence and law enforcement to defend our country against radical Islamic extremists. ... Senator Clinton and Senator Obama will withdraw our forces from Iraq based on an arbitrary timetable designed for the sake of political expediency, and which recklessly ignores the profound human calamity and dire threats to our security that would ensue. ... Senator Clinton and Senator Obama will concede to our critics that our own actions to defend against its threats are responsible for fomenting the terrible evil of radical Islamic extremism, and their resolve to combat it will be as flawed as their judgment.

After seven years of Bushagoguery, McCain knew his audience had been conditioned to expect red meat from a Republican president. So he flung it at them in heaps. The Senator from Arizona is the fake "moderate" who declared at the 2004 Convention that Republicans should not try to use national security issues to attack Democrats.

We must, whatever our disagreements, stick together in this great challenge of our time. My friends in the Democratic Party and I'm fortunate to call many of them my friends assure us they share the conviction that winning the war against terrorism is our government's most important obligation...I don't doubt the sincerity of my Democratic friends. And they should not doubt ours.

Guess what, Senator? The deal is off. You've learned divisiveness at the knees of the master, George W. Bush. Now let's see if Americans are as fed up with Republicans sowing discord as I suspect they are.

As it happens, Republicans themselves are increasingly horrified at the politics of divisiveness. Oh, no, hah...you took that the wrong way - not the kind of divisions that they've stirred up in order to turn America inside out since 2001. No, none of that. Republicans are agitated about divisiveness within their Party.

Chuck Smith, chairman of the Virginia Beach GOP and a McCain supporter, said party politics needs to change. "We can't continue to divide, divide, divide," he said.

Because the personal attacks on John McCain by fellow conservatives are getting out of hand. That divide, divide stuff is supposed to be reserved for the rest of the country, not the Party. So what if a lot of Republicans don't think McCain can be trusted? They need to learn to pipe down, according to Republican leaders who've been closing ranks lately trying to shield McCain from his critics.

It's all very reminiscent of how Republicans have fought for the last two terms to shield George W. Bush from the recriminations he so richly has earned. And we can expect more of the same from Republican partisans if McCain is elected to carry on Bush's legacy of discord for a further four years. He'll be placed beyond all criticism, another sainted McCommander-in-Chief.

We couldn't ask for a better sign that a McCain presidency would represent Bush Redux than the sudden emergence last month of a newly diagnosed psychological disorder, the "McCain Derangement Syndrome".

During Bush's first term, as their hero was piling fiasco upon fiasco, humiliated right-wingers advanced a daring medical theory: The many criticisms leveled against the president were due not to his failures, outrages and lies, but rather to an otherwise undocumented mental disease, the "Bush Derangement Syndrome", which left critics unable and unworthy to comment on the Great Man.

There was no evidence whatever to support any of the diagnoses of BDS, typically made at a great distance from the putative sufferers. But after all that's what made this medical breakthrough so daring. And let's not pretend to be surprised at the Republicans' skill-set in the area of psychoses. They've been successful for many years in identifying mental illnesses that, they say, afflict various prominent Democrats. The entire Republican Party is practically a hotbed of psychiatric research.

It's all very twisted. But there was a new twist several weeks ago when all of a sudden a similar disease was identified and named.

What a moment! Having learned nothing from the left's Bush Derangement Syndrome, the conservative movement's big talkers spent the days before Super Tuesday indulging in a fiery display of McCain Derangement Syndrome. For some of these folks, this is what medical insurance providers might call a preexisting condition, always on the verge of flaring up.

William Kristol is the Wit of the Weekly Standard, and held to be a "riot" in his own circles. Even so, not all conservatives are quite mollified yet by the argument that opposition to McCain signifies that they're ready for the booby hatch.

Partisans of John McCain say his conservative critics are "deranged."... Enough. It is not "deranged" to have concerns about McCain’s positions and his political style...Conservatives can reach differing views of McCain in good faith.

In fact some of the mentally suspect are downright indignant to find themselves at the receiving end of Republican smears!

McCain’s supporters continue to mock thoughtful, good-faith critics as "deranged."... I’m not deranged, and neither are they...McCain’s fans do their candidate no favors by telling him the only people who can save his candidacy are unhinged.

Well, be that as it may, I'm pretty sure they'll eventually embrace the idea of a "McCain Derangement Syndrome" if he should ever be elected president. Because something gaudy and divisive would be needed to deflect attention away from the full horror of Years 9-12 of Bushemonium.