Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, had lunch with The New Republic staff on Thursday—a rather gentlemanly move, considering that our publication has not always been kind to him. He provided not a few wonderful analogies for Senator Ted Cruz's utter lack of negotiation skills, and although he didn't make any of us sign his once-fearsome Taxpayer Protection Pledge, he brought plenty of paperwork for us to pore over (including lists of every national and state legislator who has signed his anti-tax pledge). But atop every packet was a single sheet with the following map, which shows "2013 Republican and Democrat[ic] Control in the States." Norquist clearly intends to scare Democrats with this map, which is so red that it seems an electoral massacre of some kind has occurred in the country.
Scary, right? But here's the only map that truly matters: