She thinks Mitt Romney could've convinced voters that Democrats were primarily responsible for the housing crisis.

Reuters

To the chagrin of Republicans, American voters still assign a large part of the blame for the bad economy to George W. Bush, who was still president at the beginning of the financial crisis. That's part of why Mitt Romney lost, says Karen Hughes, the former Bush Administration official. And in her telling, the GOP could've easily persuaded voters that is just isn't so.

Hughes is latest high-profile Republican to advise the GOP on the lessons it should take from its electoral drubbing. The most memorable line from her op-ed in Politico Friday: "If another Republican man says anything about rape other than it is a horrific, violent crime, I want to personally cut out his tongue." Is she mocking the movement conservatives who accused her of being friendly to sharia law? Pandering to Ellen Jamesians? Whatever her reason for using language so graphic, it shouldn't distract from what she said about the economy. It's as disconnected from reality as ever.

"The economy was the biggest issue and the economy is creeping along with unemployment stubbornly high, higher than it was when the president took office. The problem is that exit polls showed more than half of Americans blame that economy not on Obama, but on his predecessor, President George W. Bush," she wrote. "That's because Republicans never made the case that the financial crash was not the result of Bush -- and by implication, Republican policies. It happened during the final months of Bush's presidency, but had its roots in the crisis in the housing market. Both parties bear some of the blame, but it was Democrats who aggressively backed policies giving home loans to people who had little chance of repaying them." (emphasis added)