IN ORDER TO STEAL THE ELECTION, WILL REPUBLICANS THROW BUSH UNDER THE BUS IF THERE'S A POPULAR VOTE/ELECTORAL VOTE SPLIT?

Now that Republicans have, um -- what's the precise political science term? oh, yes -- bullshitted their way to a sense of electoral inevitability, merely by asserting their guy is winning, the reality they've created will probably manifest itself, as the gullible public buys into the notion of Romney-as-winner and votes accordingly.

But if that doesn't happen -- if Nate Silver is right, if Charlie Cook is right, and if Sam Wang of the Princeton Election Consortium is right, then Obama is still on track to win in the Electoral College, even if he loses the popular vote. Wang thinks it would take a shift not yet in evidence for Romney to win the EC, but he thinks a popular vote/electoral vote split is a distinct possibility:

Today, the race is quite close. However, note this. In terms of the Electoral College, President Obama has been ahead on every single day of the campaign, without exception.

I would then give the following verdict: Indeed the race is close, but it seems stable. For the last week, there is no evidence that conditions have been moving toward Romney. There is always the chance that I may have to eat my words -- but that will require movement that is not yet apparent in polls.

The popular vote is a different story. I estimate an approximately 25% chance that the popular vote and the electoral vote will go in opposite directions -- a "Bush v. Gore scenario".

Now, if Obama wins the Electoral College, he wins, right? Republicans insisted in 2000 that there was no other acceptable outcome -- right? And Democrats conceded the point, didn't they?

I've never believed that's how things would go if Romney were in Gore's place. I've always assumed that the GOP would do a 180, flooding the zone with hypocritical new talking points in favor of installing the guy who wins the popular vote ... and get away with it, because the press would go along and Democratic opposition would be weak and ineffectual. (Y'know, kind of the way spin is working in the aftermath of the final presidential debate.)

But wouldn't that be a slap in the face to the last Republican president, who took office in a way Republicans would now be saying is illegitimate? Wouldn't Republicans have to say they were wrong in 2000 to demand that Bush be awarded the presidency?

Well, I think, if pressed, many Republicans really will say that 2000 was settled the wrong way. They'll toss Bush under the bus. After all, when it's suited them, they've declared him a betrayer of Republican principles. (And here we thought that he was the embodiment of Republican principles.)

Consider Paul Ryan, as portrayed in a recent New York Times Magazine article. He postures as a man of deep-rooted deficit-cutting principle who lost his way in the Bush years:

"I did a lot of defensive voting during that time," Ryan said, referring specifically to a 2003 bill that overhauled Medicare and gave seniors prescription-drug benefits at a cost first estimated at $400 billion over 10 years.... Gaining a permanent majority supplanted budget discipline as his party's governing imperative. "Earmark your way, ribbon-cut your way, and you'll keep your job," Ryan said. In 2006, House Democrats reclaimed the majority in the midterm elections, putting what Bush called a "thumpin'" on the Republican Party. It was well deserved, Ryan said. He thought seriously about quitting Congress, maybe joining a policy group. He did a lot of bowhunting, spending long contemplative days in his tree stand. He talked a lot to [Senator Tom] Coburn....

"It set him free," Coburn told me, speaking of Ryan's vow to himself after 2006. "If you decide that you’re just going to ... not play the political game, all of a sudden you can have fun."

This is self-serving nonsense, but it's what a lot of Republicans seem to believe about themselves: We were under a spell for the first six years of Bush's term, then suddenly the scales fell from our eyes when we lost congressional majorities, and we vowed never to overspend again. Hallelujah!

It's a short step from that to repudiating Bush. So if they need to in order to install Romney, it seems quite possible that they will.