It occurs to me that Republicans treat GWB the same way Democrats treated LBJ for decades after he left office.
When I was growing up in the '80s and '90s you never heard anyone describe themselves as a “Johnson Democrat.” Outside Texas, you rarely heard any Democrat even invoke his name. Kennedy was the '60s president that Democrats (and more than a few Republicans) wanted to emulate, and whose legacy was celebrated, even though it was Johnson who signed into law most of the major progressive legislation of that era. However, his handling of Vietnam so tanked his legacy, that his name just became sort of decoupled from his domestic successes. And seeing also how the last year of his administration was marked by protests, riots, growing skepticism over his Great Society programs and the fraying of the New Deal coalition that had powered the Democrats for years (with said fraying paving the way for Nixon, and eventually Reagan), Democrats up through the turn of the millennium couldn’t seem to put enough distance between themselves and him.
It’s really only been in the past 10 to 15 years, with the popularity of the Robert Caro biographies, and liberal pining for a ballbuster capable of ramming transformative legislation through an obstinate congress, that Johnson’s reputation has been somewhat rehabilitated.
I don’t see Bush’s reputation undergoing a similar revival, simply because his list of positive accomplishments is so thin. But, in more establishment circles you do see a certain longing for a time when such a well-behaved Republican could occupy the Oval Office.