This is the Only Republican in the Country Willing to Tell the Truth: That Everything is Just Fine

The thing is, it actually makes sense for Karl Rove to infer that the Republicans have come pretty much all the way back based on their narrow runoff victory in Georgia. After all, his own reputation as a strategic super-genius was based on his amazing track record of getting Republicans elected in such notoriously hostile environments as Alabama and Texas as well as a presidential election he lost only to be bailed out by Florida’s amateur-night electoral system and a partisan Supreme Court. (Remember the dozens of credulous articles taking Rove’s claims that he was a new Mark Hanna ushering in a decades-long Republican realignment seriously? Times of sustained high comedy, the early aughts.)