If anyone were betting on it, I would happily wager that the right-wing talking point that "this is still a center-right nation" was being ginned up and distributed to every conservative talking head on the planet within 24 hours of Barack Obama's election victory, if not before.

I mean, it's coming out of the mouths of nearly every single right-wing pundit who's managed airtime since Nov. 5. It started the next day, and has only gained volume since.

And of course, it's so risibly false that it really tells us much more about conservatives and their grip on reality than anything else.

David Sirota has the goods on just how prominent the theme has become since the election:

As the graph shows, the use of the exact term "center-right nation" spiked immediately after election day (point "0" is the day my column published, point "1" is election day).

While it's true - this trend study doesn't tell us how many of the "center-right nation" references are saying this is "not a center-right nation." But a look through Lexis-Nexis shows it's safe to assume that the vast majority of these references are asserting this is a "center-right nation."

So we're not talking about theory anymore - we're talking about empirical fact. The media has exponentially increased the amount of times it claims that this country is a "center-right nation" - at the very same time public opinion data shows the country is a decidedly center-left nation. In short, we have the two hard data points proving that as the country has become more progressive and validated its progressivism on election day, the media has increased its claims that the nation is conservative.

Of course, this is just the latest wingnut meme. It tells us, though, that the Republicans' longtime operating motto -- "If you can't beat 'em with brains, baffle 'em with bulls--t" -- is very much still with us.