I have seen the term “Buchco” used here and on the net. What does “Bushco” mean? I know it is for the President, but what is the “co” for? Where does this term come from?
It’s shorthand for “the adminstration” – it means Bush + all his appointees: Ashcroft, Rumsfeld, Karl Rove, etc.
I don’t think its too much of a stretch to believe it is simply a contraction of Bush & Co. (Bush and Company) that points a slightly wagging finger at Bushco’s close ties to various corporate interests.
AllTheWeb lets you limit searches to web pages published between set dates. The feature is far from perfect. However, a search for ‘Bushco’ in documents prior to Oct 12, 2001 turns up only refs to a company named “the Bush Company”; nothing about the president. Searching for ‘Bushco’ in documents updated prior to Oct 12, 2002 returns this page referring to the prez and his companions as Bushco. So the word likely first appeared in 2002. The bottom of that page also refers to ‘ENRONBUSHco’. The Enron blowup, and Bush’s ties to Ken Lay could have given rise to the term.
Wasn’t one of the memes from the 2000 Presidential Campaign that George W. Bush would be America’s first “CEO President”? That he’d run the country like a company?
(Which company, he didn’t specify. If only we had thought to ask… 
)
I think “Bushco” is a little more pointed than “Bush & Co.” The latter can just mean “Bush and his cronies”, while the former sounds more like a corrupt corporation like Enron. “Bushista” brings visions of the rulers of a South American Banana Republic. I’m still waiting to hear someone say something about “the Bush junta”. (It wouldn’t be strictly accurate, but it gets the point across. )
“Bushco” and “Shrubco” were and are terms used extensively by Mark Morford, a columnist for The San Francisco Chronicle. Here is his most recent column. As you can see, he is virulently anti-Bush, pro-gay, pro- abortion, etc.
Whether he coined them himself or not would be a question you would have to ask him via email.