Blue America

Remember those county maps from 2004?

Chris Bowers over at MyDD lays out what they look like in 2006, in the era of 29%. You can travel from coast to coast without ever setting foot in Bush country.

What this shows isn't just the current revulsion at the chimp or any current policy. Rather, as the poll numbers - see posts below - suggest, it reflects a wholesale re-evaluation and rejection of chimp's entire approach to governance.

You may have noticed that the true believers, as they fashion their nooses, bemoan that chimp and his coterie did not 'govern as conservatives' or, out of sheer force of habit, blame 'Democratic obstructionism'.

Wrong. The seamless control of our government they have exercised over the past five years has resulted in a rate of passage (and court approval) for reactionary legislation of about 95%. That's an awfully high success or enactment rate, more than is to be expected in a small-R republican form of government.

Ignoring the simple fact that the present consequenes were foretold at the time by the opposition - deficits, a bloody quagmire in Iraq, and so on - the right should pose itself a fundamental question: if your agenda requires a 100% enactment rate to be effective, then how is it ever going to work? Not even FDR at the height of his power, the Hundred Days, got every agenda item passed through Congress or accepted by the courts.

The 'conservative movement' has come as close to absolute power as it is possible to come in our form of government. Judge the results for yourself. And then, ponder what it means if even that amount of power isn't sufficient to achieve results the American people actually like.

Yes, ponder that as the ideology of Goldwater, Reagan and Bush dies.