Are the independents careful thinkers?

ZAKARIA: But the big shift if you look 1996 when the Democrats sweep into power, 57 percent of independents voted Democrat. In this election, 57 percent of independents voted Republican. What does that tell you?

MAHER: That tells me independents don't pay that much attention. Independents are people who just throw out the party that's in power because Obama got elected and it didn't immediately start rating 20s. So throw the bums out. By the way, the same bums that they just, you know, threw out two years ago they wanted to put back in. No wonder we can't get anything done in this country.

So, you know, this idea that the independents are these -- these careful thinkers who assess what's going -- I don't think that's who the independent voter is. I just they're -- they're cranky people who want change. They voted for change in '06. They voted for change in '08. They voted -- I don't blame them for being impatient with Obama. He did promise us change and he's delivered some of it. I mean there has been change.

In other ways, he looks too much like what we had before. I could name a whole list of issues where the Democrats and the Republicans really are the same party. When people say, you know, there's not enough bipartisanship, I very often think, no, there's actually too much. On Afghanistan, too much. We have two parties, we have one policy. Gun control, two parties, one policy. Marijuana, two parties, one policy. Lot -- there's a lot of that in this country.