I guess we know what Karl Rove's post-White House career is going to be: comedian. In an OpEd in The Wall St. Journal, Rove writes:

The Pew Research Center reported last week that President Barack Obama "has the most polarized early job approval of any president" since surveys began tracking this 40 years ago. The gap between Mr. Obama's approval rating among Democrats (88%) and Republicans (27%) is 61 points. This "approval gap" is 10 points bigger than George W. Bush's at this point in his presidency, despite Mr. Bush winning a bitterly contested election.

Part of Mr. Obama's polarized standing can be attributed to a long-term trend. University of Missouri political scientist John Petrocik points out that since 1980, each successive first term president has had more polarized support than his predecessor with the exception of 1989, when George H.W. Bush enjoyed a modest improvement over Ronald Reagan's 1981 standing.

But rather than end or ameliorate that trend, Mr. Obama's actions and rhetoric have accelerated it. His campaign promised post-partisanship, but since taking office Mr. Obama has frozen Republicans out of the deliberative process, and his response to their suggestions has been a brusque dismissal that "I won."

There is rich irony in Karl Rove of all people accusing President Obama of being polarizing, but notably, it's also a deliberate mis-reading of the Pew data (ya, I know, shocking.)

Here's what Pew's associate director Michael Dimock said about Rove's interpretation (via Greg Sargent):  

"It's unfair to say that Obama has caused this divisiveness or to say that he is a polarizing president," Dimock said. He claimed that this phenomenon is driven by long-term trends, uncommon Dem enthusiasm, and the Republican tendency to be more hostile to opposing presidents than Democrats.

Indeed, the Pew analysis itself states plainly that the Republicans themselves, not the president, are culpable in driving down Obama's approval ratings among their rank and file:

By comparison, there was a somewhat smaller 51-point partisan gap in views of George W. Bush's job performance in April 2001, a few months into his first term. At that time, Republican enthusiasm for Bush was comparable to how Democrats feel about Obama today, but there was substantially less criticism from members of the opposition party. Among Democrats, 36% approved of Bush's job performance in April 2001; that compares with a 27% job approval rating for Obama among Republicans today.

Rove conveniently leaves that out.

In reality, the fact that Republicans have as low an opinion of Mr. Obama AND he still manages a 59% approval rating actually reinforces just how marginalized and out of touch with the mainstream Republicans have become. President Obama has clearly built a national consensus around his presidency and his policies and Republicans are not a part of that consensus. Their continued opposition to a president and an agenda that was ratified by 53% of the country in November and enjoys about 60% approval today is simply a sign of their growing irrelevance.

Update [2009-4-9 15:32:47 by Todd Beeton]:Chuck Todd makes the point that 1 in 4 Republicans approving of President Obama isn't actually bad compared to how low approval for Bush was among Democrats. Also, the Republican rank and file is now both smaller and more conservative than ever before. In other words: Obama is more popular than Bush was and his opposition is less relevant than Bush's was.