Like the 1944 pop standard says, President George W. Bush has hurt the most all those he professed to love the most — from the conservative ideologues and born-again Christians to the free-market enthusiasts, energy producers and red state political class. Perhaps no politician in recent memory has done more damage to his political base.

The most obvious recent equivalent, Richard Nixon, did cause harm to the conservative cause, but that damage was short-lived. It reflected his deviousness more than his policies. Similarly, Bill Clinton’s many personality flaws weakened the Democrats’ hold on the White House, but inflicted no permanent harm to liberalism.

In contrast, the Katrina-scale disaster that has been the Bush presidency may leave his ideological backers in the wilderness for years to come. Over the past eight years, Bush has done more to undermine conservatism than all of the country’s college faculties, elite media and Hollywood studios put together.

The late Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater — whose memory remains far more cherished than that of either President Bush — nurtured the modern brand of conservatism. Nixon employed some of these tenets, but they flourished most fully under Ronald Reagan.

Conservatism’s core values rested on notions of a strong national defense and free market economics. Bush has punctured these ideas in a way that transcends the effects of historically anomalous scandals such as Watergate or Clinton’s extramarital affairs. Bush has not only dinged the conservative car, he has totaled it.

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I would be interested to know how many previously registered Republicans fled the party under the tenure of Bush the Second. You can add my name to that list. But I’m actually grateful. His disastrous presidency jolted me out of my partisan comfort zone and freed me from blind allegiance to a failing ideology.

The map is breaking down, and Republicans – outside of the south and a few areas of Appalachia – can no longer count on the old red/blue district lines.

What this means in the short term is that Republicans have to give up the rosy predictions of Barone and Fund. They can no longer go after “red” districts with Democratic incumbents and hope to win a majority. In just the preliminary numbers put together by Swing State Project, there are 24 Republicans whose districts voted for Bush in 2004 and Obama in 2008. Lee Terry, a Nebraska Republican, now represents a “blue” district. So does Mary Bono Mack, whose Palm Springs, California district has not been at risk since her late husband, Sonny Bono, won it 14 years ago.

And Obama’s victory turned many swing seats into safer Democratic strongholds. In 2006, liberal newspaper publisher John Yarmuth scored an upset victory in Kentucky’s 2nd district, which contains the city of Louisville and had voted only 51-49 for Kerry. This year Yarmuth won a rematch with his 2006 opponent as Obama carried the district by 13 points. Freshman Democrat Chris Murphy represents a Connecticut district that split 49-49 between Kerry and Bush but went by 14 points for Obama. Seats like these fall off of Republican target lists – strategists from both parties mark them “safe” and move on.

What does it mean in the long term? After all, can’t the pendulum swing right back? Of course it can. But it doesn’t swing by itself. It needs to be pushed by something – by a crisis of faith in the ruling party, by reforms in the opposition party, by demographic shifts that give one party a leg up.

Republicans can no longer fool themselves into thinking the country is naturally slanted toward them, or that they have a built-in majority. If the Democrats can win Hastertland, the Republicans need to figure out how to take it back, or how to win somewhere else.

The answer, quite simply, is until he gets it right.

In the post, two of the three electoral maps he cites are projections from March and July — not even the final, actual election results. The last map he includes is the familiar, but deceptive county-by-county map that paints the country in a sea of red, where land mass is given more weight and importance than actual votes.

As I pointed out shortly after the election, this nation is not quite as red as it appears. When you look at a cartogram, a map in which the sizes of states are rescaled according to their population, the electoral map looks significantly different.

Even more, when you take the actual proportional voting margins rather than the all-or-nothing extremes shown on Mr. Martin’s cited map, you get an even more accurate picture of where the country stands — even in Oklahoma (not quite so starkly red anymore).

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To get to Mr. Martin’s claim of an evenly split electorate that was, as he called it, “with[in] a margin of error of a few idiots on the far left side of reality,” the 53% to 46% — a 7% spread — is certainly outside of most credible polls’ margins of error. It is certainly a wider margin than the 52% to 47% — a 5% spread — in 2004 and even more certainly greater than the incredible negative win margin of 47.9% to 48.4% — a negative 0.5% margin — in 2000.

Furthermore, Obama’s electoral win of 365 to 173 (+192 margin) is a significantly more decisive victory than either of Bush’s 2000 or 2004 victories — 271-266 (+5 margin) and 286-252 (+34 margin) respectively.

In both electoral college margins and actual voting percentage margins, the country was much less divided — especially given the significant Democratic gains in both houses of Congress — and certainly much less “evenly split” in 2008 than in the prior two elections.

So, Mr. Martin, you can keep showing your maps, but it doesn’t change the reality. Perhaps you aren’t factoring in the much larger margin of error of a not-so-few idiots on the far right side of reality.

Mitch McConnell says Republican senators “represent half the American population.” James Surowiecki does the math and concludes that they actually only represent 37 percent of the voters. All the more reason not to worry too much about getting 80 votes for anything.

Of course, this is the same math that said Bush’s 48% and 51% wins in 2000 and 2004 respectively equaled ‘a mandate’ while Obama’s 53% win in 2008 does not equal a mandate. And it’s the same math that says the GOP losses in 2008 of the White House, more seats (8) in the Senate and even more seats (21) in the House does not equal a shift away from the Republican Party but rather equals an evenly-divided country that still remains center-right. And, this is the same senator who supported Bush’s fiscal recklessness and mind-numbing deficits, yet all of a sudden urges “caution” and “restraint” with the new president’s spending plans.

With this type of math, it’s no wonder we are in the mess that we find ourselves in today.

INTERESTING FACTS —– NOTICE LINK AND MAP AT BOTTOM

Some unreported stats about the 2008 election

Professor Joseph Olson of Hemline University School of Law, St. Paul, Minnesota, points out some interesting facts concerning the 2008 Presidential election:

-Number of States won by: Democrats: 20; Republicans: 30

-Square miles of land won by: Democrats: 580,000; Republicans: 2,427,000

-Population of counties won by: Democrats: 127 million; Republicans: 143 million

-Murder rate per 100,000 residents in counties won by: Democrats: 13.2; Republicans: 2.1

Professor Olson adds: “In aggregate, the map of the territory Republican won was mostly the land owned by the taxpaying citizens. Democrat territory mostly encompassed those citizens living in rented or government-owned tenements and living off various forms of government welfare…”

Olson believes the United States is now somewhere between the “complacency and apathy” phase of Professor Tyler’s definition of democracy, with some forty percent of the nation’s population already having reached the “governmental dependency” phase.

Notice that only in the states of Alaska and Oklahoma: All counties were won by McCain/Palin.

The original posting with this information is below this Newsweek article at this link: http://www.newsweek.com/id/163337.

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Here’s what FactCheck found (reprinted with permission):

First, Joseph Olson is a professor at Hamline (not Hemline) University School of Law in St. Paul, Minn. None of what appears in this e-mail was written by him. He has been denying authorship of this old hoax since earlier versions first cropped up after the 2000 election. Most recently he posted a disclaimer about the 2008 version on his university profile page:

Olson: There is an e-mail floating around the internet dealing with the 2008 Obama/McCain election and the 2000 Bush/Gore election, remarks of a Scottish philosopher named Alexander Tyler, etc. Part of it is attributed to me. It is entirely BOGUS as to my authorship. I’ve been trying to kill it since December 2000. For details see: http://www.snopes.com/politics/quotes/tyler.asp.

More important, the “unreported stats” listed in this e-mail are all wrong:

• President-elect Barack Obama actually carried 28 states (and the District of Columbia), not 20 as claimed in the message. Sen. John McCain carried only 22 states, not 30.
• The total area of states won by Obama is actually 1,483,702 square miles, significantly more than the 580,000 stated by the e-mail. McCain’s states have an area of 2,310,315 square miles, not the 2,427,000 claimed.
• The population of counties carried by Obama is just under 183 million, not the 127 million claimed. McCain carried counties with a total population of just under 119 million, far fewer than claimed in this message.
• The murder rate for counties carried by Obama was 6.56 per 100,000 inhabitants, less than half the rate claimed in the message. The rate for counties carried by McCain was 3.60 per 100,000, much higher than claimed in the message.

Our Calculations

We calculated county populations and murder rates using official data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s “USA County Data Files.” We obtained nearly complete county-by-county election results from the Web site of University of Michigan professor Mark Newman, who extracted them from USA Today’s election Web site as of Nov. 16. We adjusted these figures only to resolve ties in three counties (more recent figures show two of these counties going for Obama, one for McCain). It is possible that a few counties will change hands when all official results are reported.

Population figures are Census estimates for 2007. Murder rates are calculated from the number of murders and non-negligent homicides by county for 2005, the most recent figures Census provides, and population estimates for 2005.

Origins of a Hoax

This hoax goes back eight years, when an earlier version began to circulate following the bitterly disputed 2000 presidential election. Snopes.com, a site devoted to debunking urban myths, took that one apart at the time, noting that Prof. Olson denied authorship and that some factual claims didn’t check out. A new version went around for a time after the 2004 election, and whoever wrote the 2008 version of the e-mail didn’t even bother to make up new “stats,” but simply substituted the words “Democrats” and “Republicans” where the names “Gore” and “Bush” had appeared.

The origin of the population and square-mile figures used in the 2008 version, in fact, is this USA Today map of the 2000 election results. It shows 143 million people in counties won by George W. Bush and 127 million in counties won by Al Gore, for example. Of course elections are won by electoral votes not counties won. And the fact is that in 2008 the counties carried by Obama were far more populous than those carried by McCain.

The crime figures, however, were no more accurate in the original than in the 2008 version. They were debunked by Snopes which put the actual county-by-county murder rate at 6.5 for counties supporting Gore, in 2000, and 4.1 for counties supporting Bush. Each of those figures is a far cry from the 13.2 and 2.1 figures used in the original 2000 e-mail, and they’re simply repeated in the most recent version and attributed to Obama and McCain counties.

One original note in the 2008 version of the e-mail is the line added at the end: “Notice that only in the states of Alaska and Oklahoma: All counties were won by McCain/Palin.” But even that is a bit misleading. McCain and his vice presidential running mate, Gov. Sarah Palin, did win all counties in Oklahoma and did carry the state of Alaska, but Alaska doesn’t tally votes by county.

Where Did It Come From?

References to the original e-mail were spotted as far back as November 2000. Terry Krepel, writing for ConWebWatch, a Web site “dedicated to analysis and critique of conservative ‘new media’,” mentioned two articles that appeared on the news site NewsMax.com in 2000 citing information from the e-mail.

Dave Hamrick, in his article for Georgia’s Fayette Citizen, offers an explanation of how Prof. Olson’s name came to be tied to the bogus murder rate figures. He asked Olson about them and discovered that the e-mail wasn’t Olson’s work:

Hamrick, Jan. 17, 2001: But in response to my e-mail, Olson said the “research” was attributed to him erroneously. He said it came from a Sheriff Jay Printz in Montana. I e-mailed Sheriff Printz, and guess what? He didn’t do the research either, and didn’t remember who had e-mailed it to him.

In other words, he got the same legend e-mailed to him and passed it on to Olson without checking it out, and when Olson passed it on, someone thought it sounded better if a law professor had done the research, and so it grew.

Who knows where it originally came from, but it’s just not true.

We can’t be certain with whom, or precisely when, the message originated, but Hamrick’s observation, that Olson forwarded a version of the e-mail he had received, may explain how Olson’s name became attached to it.

-D’Angelo Gore and Brooks Jackson

Roland Burris, the man Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich picked to succeed Barack Obama in the Senate, might get to etch another accolade into the monument he built for himself if this appointment goes through.

You see, Burris has already charted his esteemed career path on the walls of his future grave in Chicago’s Oak Woods Cemetery (pictured here). Beneath a seal of the state of Illinois, Burris lists his accomplishments to date, and there seems to be plenty of room above the bench to mention his career in the Senate - if he has one.

Humility, unfortunately, has never been a pre-qualification for the U.S. Senate. Vanity, on the other hand, seems to be a prerequisite.

It all seems so very tragically comical (and utterly embarassing for the people of Illinois).

Dear Fellow Constituent,

The George W Bush Presidential Library is now in the planning stages and accepting donations. The Library will include:

• The Hurricane Katrina Room, which is still under construction.
• The Alberto Gonzales Room, where you won’t be able to remember anything.
• The Texas Air National Guard Room, where you don’t even have to show up.
• The Walter Reed Hospital Room, where they don’t let you in.
• The Guantanamo Bay Room, where they don’t let you out.
• The Weapons of Mass Destruction Room, which no one has been able to find.
• The National Debt Room, which is huge and has no ceiling.
• The Tax Cut Room, with entry only to the wealthy.
• The Economy Room, which is in the toilet.
• The Iraq War Room. (After you complete your first visit, they make you to go back for a second, third, fourth, and sometimes fifth visit.)
• The Dick Cheney Room, in the famous undisclosed location, complete with shotgun gallery.
• The Environmental Conservation Room, still empty.
• The Supreme Court Gift Shop, where you can buy an election.
• The Airport Men’s Room, where you can meet some of your favorite Republican Senators.
• The Decider Room, complete with dart board, magic 8-ball, Ouija board, dice, coins, and straws.

The library will feature an electron microscope to help you locate and view the President’s accomplishments.

The library will also include many famous Quotes by George W. Bush:

• ‘The vast majority of our imports come from outside the country.’
• ‘If we don’t succeed, we run the risk of failure.’
• ‘Republicans understand the importance of bondage between a mother and child.’
• ‘No senior citizen should ever have to choose between prescription drugs and medicine.’
• ‘I believe we are on an irreversible trend toward more freedom and democracy - but that could change.’
• ‘One word sums up probably the responsibility of any Governor, and that one word is ‘to be prepared’.’
• ‘Verbosity leads to unclear, inarticulate things.’
• ‘I have made good judgments in the past. I have made good judgments in the future.’
• ‘The future will be better tomorrow.’
• ‘We’re going to have the best educated American people in the world.’
• ‘One of the great things about books is sometimes there are some fantastic pictures.’ (during an education photo-op)
• ‘Illegitimacy is something we should talk about in terms of not having it.’
• ‘We are ready for any unforeseen event that may or may not occur.’
• ‘It isn’t pollution that’s harming the environment. It’s the impurities in our air and water that are doing it.’
• ‘I stand by all the misstatements that I’ve made.’…George W. Bush to Sam Donaldson

PLEASE GIVE GENEROUSLY!

Sincerely,
Jack Abramoff, Co-Chair G.W. Bush Library Board of Directors

… as a new president, Bush was like Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the 2008 GOP vice presidential nominee whom critics said lacked knowledge about foreign affairs. When Bush first came into office, he was surrounded by experienced advisers like Vice President Dick Cheney and Powell, who Wilkerson said ended up playing damage control for the president.

To which Spencer Ackerman asks…

Is comparing Bush to Sarah Palin more insulting to Bush or to Palin?

Matt Yglesias answers…

I’m going to say “more insulting to Palin.” Palin’s something of a laughingstock, but Bush is a villain. I mean, he wrecked the world economy, he led to millions of Iraqis being forced to flee their homes, he’s a total disaster and a disgrace. Palin gave bad answers in TV interviews. There’s no real comparison.