Duh-bya: Conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks chides liberals for constructing an explanation for the election loss that reassures "they are morally superior to the people who just defeated them." He writes, "This year, the official story is that throngs of homophobic, Red America values-voters surged to the polls to put George Bush over the top."

He's wrong. We on the left don't think we're morally superior to Bush's fans (that kind of judgment is their game).

But we sure are smarter.

A recent survey by the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland backs this thesis up. It found:

* nearly 70 percent of Bush supporters still believe the U.S. has come up with "clear evidence" that Saddam Hussein was working closely with Al Qaeda
* a third of Bush voters believes we found WMDs in Iraq, and
* more than a third believe that a substantial majority of world opinion supported the U.S.-led invasion.

As the Times' Bob Herbert concludes, "This is scary. How do you make a rational political pitch to people who have put that part of their brain on hold? No wonder Bush won." Another source correlating presidential preference with average IQ backs Herbert up: The 16 states with the highest average IQ went to Kerry; the bottom 25 went to Bush.

(Thanks, Ben.)