With the subject line of its latest mailing, Moveon.org has hit upon the winning phrase for the 2008 election: “Bush’s third term.”

Dear MoveOn member,

What would a third Bush term look like? Endless war in Iraq, continued torture and spying, more ultra-conservative judges, more and more people without health care, and so on…it’d be awful.

But that’s impossible, right? Well, maybe not: Every Republican candidate for president is trying to distinguish himself from Bush, but the major candidates would carry forward Bush’s core agenda:

• President Giuliani would support a second escalation of the war in Iraq.
• President Romney would double the size of the Guantanamo Bay prison.
• President McCain would bomb, bomb, bomb Iran.
• President Fred Thompson would have offered Scooter Libby a full pardon.

No matter which Democrat faces one of these Bushies, we should be crystal clear that that’s the referendum at stake in ’08. Not are you better off than you were eight years ago (not that that shouldn’t be convincing enough), but can we survive four more years of this?

If an electoral majority of Americans actually wants “Bush’s third term,” it’s probably time to look for a country that God doesn’t bless so much.