The widespread belief on the right that Barack Obama is a Muslim is one of the stranger features of this period in history. There are some of them who know that Obama says he's a Christian but are sure that's all an act designed to fool people, while he secretly prays to Allah. But there are probably a greater number who haven't given it all that much thought; they just heard somewhere that he's a Muslim, and it made perfect sense to them—after all, he's kinda foreign, if you know what I mean. Rather remarkably, that belief has grown over time; as the latest poll from the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life shows, fully 30 percent of Republicans, and 34 percent of conservative Republicans, now believe Obama is Muslim. These numbers are about double what they were four years ago.

You can bet there aren't too many who think there's nothing wrong with it if he were. For many of them, it's just a shorthand for Obama being alien and threatening. So it leads me to ask: Can we say, finally, that no Democratic president has ever been hated by Republicans quite as much as Barack Obama?

In the past when this question has been asked, the sensible reply is to not forget history...But I really think we've reached a new height.

Democratic Presidents since the founding of the Republican party in 1854:

Franklin Pierce was president from 1853-1857
James Buchanan was president from 1857-1861
Andrew Johnson was president from 1865-1869
Grover Cleveland was president from 1885-1889, and again from 1893-1897
Woodrow Wilson was president from 1913-1921
Franklin D. Roosevelt was president from 1933-1945
Harry S. Truman was president from 1945-1953
John F. Kennedy was president from 1961-1963
Lyndon B. Johnson was president from 1963-1969
Jimmy Carter was president from 1977-1981
Bill Clinton was president from 1993-2001
Barack Obama has been president since 2009.