If your head’s been buried under the sand the last couple years, it’ll come as a surprise to hear the Republican Party’s in shambles. The tell? Nevermind senior senators headed to early retirement—just take a look at the party’s future. Every GOP presidential candidate is a tangent on the Bush legacy.

No matter how they say they’re going to drive, they are still driving Bush’s bus. There’s no break with the status quo, no sense of innovation, no return to states’ rights and absolutely no return to moderation, transparency, and consensus. This crop of candidates is unworthy of a new chapter in Republicanism.

John McCain is the best example. The ghosts of 2000 still haunt him: the vicious smear campaign that destroyed his South Carolina primary run have retrofitted the Straight Talk Express into a brain-washed insipid candidacy.

Seven years ago, McCain’s wife was painted as a drug addict. The couple’s adopted daughter was said to be the spawn of an affair. McCain’s patriotism, sexuality and mental history were all questioned.

In retrospect, phony-horrible but exciting stuff. Now McCain’s just another cookie cutter GOP rich white male.

He risked his reputation on the troop surge. He toured Baghdad and remarked how safe it was. In the same week, bombs ripped through the market killing scores of Iraqis. Although he once denounced the religious right as “agents of intolerance,” he now sees Christianity as an important qualification to be president. The 2007 McCain seem poised to inherit the Bush Republican Party, but some guy from Law and Order kept showing up in Iowa.

Fred Thompson is beating McCain in the ‘who can be Bush 2.0’ standings. Since declaring his candidacy, Thompson’s numbers have plummeted. Before his official candidacy, he enjoyed the free PR on Law and Order re-runs and radio appearances. But now he has to answer to a pro-choice position in 1994 and being called “dumb” by a scandal-plagued Richard Nixon. Thompson, another rich white male, is putting all his eggs in the economy basket.

It’s worth wondering whether he, like our current president, would veto a $35 billion children’s health insurance bill two weeks before asking Congress for $196 billion for the Iraqi occupation and operations in Afghanistan.

A Mitt Romney-Mike Huckabee ticket seemed the most formidable. That is until Romney said in a debate that he’d consult his lawyers before consulting Congress regarding military action against Iran. Rudy Giuliani tried to make this into a big deal, but it failed to gain the distinctive power that drove Barack Obama out of the Hillary Clinton-dominated mainstream.

Romney, lawyer jokes notwithstanding, represents the biggest shift in Republicanness, and if nominated could change the nature of modern Republicanism for the better. But all we hear about is his religion. There’s no mention of his ascent at Bain, where he turned a mediocre company into one of the most lucrative consulting firms in the country. As for his gubernatorial experience in Massachusetts, Romney is busy dumping on his former home state instead of talking about his consensus-building and legislative achievements there. Boston’s Big Dig might’ve been a disaster, but Romney’s health care initiatives were not. Instead of Mormonism hyperbole and Catholic-Kennedy comparisons, Romney ought to go on the offensive and prove he is the most competent and qualified candidate for the office.

Like Romney, Giuliani has the potential to remake the Republican Party in his image, much like McCain in 2000. The religious right is threatening to abandon the party if Giuliani is nominated. A Republican Party without James Dobson and the Family Values Council might be traditional, but electoral success would be unlikely.

Giuliani transcends ordinary chicken-hawkness when it comes to protecting America. He talks a tough game when it comes to Iran. He hasn’t however come out like Obama did on a theoretical Pakistani intervention. No matter, this might be Giuliani’s favorite week of the year—Islamofascism Awareness Week!

Although the GOP candidates are all warring, sometimes embarrassingly so, to capture Reagan’s shadow and pin it to themselves, there is no comparison between this group and traditional Republicans. Republicans such as Sandra Day O’Connor, William Cohen, Gerald Ford, Barry Goldwater, Dwight Eisenhower and above all Theodore Roosevelt represent something with much deeper roots than mere Reagan ideological spin-off.

Neo-Republicanism champions deregulation without decentralization, effectively creating a federal monopoly of unchecked power. And what did we learn in high school? Absolute power corrupts absolutely. The next chapter of Republicanism is likely to be more of the same. Although history doesn’t repeat itself, if a Republican becomes president in 2008, it will rhyme.

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Max Zimbert is a contributing writer and a graduate student at USC.