Quite a first week. Did the House carrot fail? No. It has the Republicans right where President Obama wants them. BarryO, Rahm, Biden and Co. have done a shrewd political manoeuvring job. The Repugs are backed into a corner and face the choice of going against the will of the people in their home state who voted for Obama or supporting the President and thus alienating their base.

By letting the John Boehner’s of the world grab the spotlight and microphone, Obama has ensured he will only face the lunatic, discredited fringe as opposition for the next eight years. These are people representing the only true Red states left (more on that later) and have no political risk. Their base is conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh’s and they want nothing to do with anything allowing Obama to succeed.

What Obama has shrewdly done, is make it possible for moderate Republican Senators like, Gregg of New Hampshire (rumoured now to be his choice for Secretary of Commerce and… if he takes it the Democratic Governor would appoint the 60^th Democrat senator thus killing any filibuster hopes), Collins and Snowe of Maine and Chafee from Rhode Island to buck the party trend of “just say no.” 

The punditry bloviated all week asking why Obama was taking such great pains to meet with Republicans and no one saw the hole trap he dug under the White House rug. As a descendant of the Campbell’s of Argyll (aka the bloody sisters of the night), our new President is a fan of history and my clan Lured MacDonalds, MacGregors and several other clans to a feast, drank coloured water while the rest got blotto’ed drunk then slaughtered them. Obama is making the Republicans think they are in control and have a voice before the hammer falls on them.

And while the Republicans meet to elect their sacrificial lamb party leader for the next four years, Gallup issued a damning poll yesterday showing there are only five true red (Republican) states left and even there the margin shrank.

There results and conclusions are below:

What is immediately clear from the map is that residents of the United States were very Democratic in their political orientation last year. In fact, Gallup has earlier reported that a majority of Americans nationwide said they identified with or leaned to the Democratic Party in 2008.

All told, 29 states and the District of Columbia had Democratic party affiliation advantages of 10 points or greater last year. This includes all of the states in the Northeast, and all but Indiana in the Great Lakes region. There are even several Southern states in this grouping, including Arkansas, North Carolina, and Kentucky.

An additional six states had Democratic advantages ranging between 5 and 9 points.

In contrast, only five states had solid or leaning Republican orientations in 2008, with Utah, Wyoming, Idaho, and Alaska in the former group, and Nebraska in the latter.

The most balanced political states in 2008 were Texas (+2 Democratic), South Dakota (+1), Mississippi (+1), North Dakota (+1), South Carolina (even), Arizona (even), Alabama (+1 Republican), and Kansas (+2 Republican).

The rank-ordering of states on the Democratic-to-Republican continuum generally follows the election results quite closely — Obama won 22 of the 23 most Democratic states (West Virginia being the only exception), and McCain won the 17 most Republican states.

Virginia, Florida, and Indiana (all with +9 Democratic partisanship advantages) are arguably the most impressive wins for Obama, since they were the least Democratic states he won. McCain managed to win West Virginia, which had a 19-point Democratic advantage, as well as three other solidly Democratic states — Kentucky (+13), Arkansas (+12), and Missouri (+11). McCain also swept the states that had narrow Democratic advantages of less than five points.

The political landscape of the United States has clearly shifted in the Democratic direction, and in most states, a greater proportion of state residents identified as Democrats or said they leaned to the Democratic Party in 2008 than identified as Republicans or leaned Republican.

As recently as 2002, a majority of states were Republican in orientation. By 2005, movement in the Democratic direction was becoming apparent, and this continued in 2006. That dramatic turnaround is clearly an outgrowth of Americans’ dissatisfaction with the way the Republicans (in particular, President George W. Bush) governed the country.

With Democratic support at the national level the highest in more than two decades and growing each of the last five years, Republican prospects for significant gains in power in the near term do not appear great. But the recent data do show that party support can change rather dramatically in a relatively short period of time. Gallup interviewed 355,334 national adults, aged 18 and older, conducted in 2008 as part of Gallup Poll Daily tracking.

So the immediate news is not good for Republicans. What is even more interesting is how blind and deaf they are to their own reality. They still behave like the part in control.

No problem. SPIN that altered reality long and far and like at the end of the Hoover Administration, Democrats could control the White House and Congress for the next 30-50 years.

It’s good to be king.