The good must have been interred with Karl Rove’s resignation letter, because there’s not a lot of love for him in blogland today, nor much respect for his reputation as a political mastermind.

National Review Online editor Kathryn Jean Lopez hopes that Bush’s political fortunes improve with Rove’s absence. “If it’s a successful last year, the myth of ‘Bush’s brain’ may be laid to rest,” she writes at The Corner.

Michelle Malkin, normally a reliable Republican cheerleader, wishes Rove hadn’t waited so long to resign. “Imagine how much better off the White House and the Republican Party might be now if he had, in fact, left a year ago,” she writes on her personal blog. Among the heresies committed by Rove, Malkin cites “the Harriet Miers debacle, the botching of the Dubai ports battle, or the undeniable stumbles in post-Iraq invasion policies.” She also disapproves of what she calls “the spectacular disaster of the illegal alien shamnesty, which will be the everlasting stain Rove leaves behind.”

Moving from far right to impossible-to-place-on-a-continuum on your blogosphere dial, Andrew Sullivan calls Rove “one of the worst political strategists in recent times.” Sullivan continues:

He took a chance to realign the country and to unite it in a war - and threw it away in a binge of hate-filled niche campaigning, polarization and short-term expediency. His divisive politics and elevation of corrupt mediocrities to every branch of government has turned an entire generation off the conservative label.

And on the center-left, Time magazine columnist Joe Klein, writing at Swampland, advises Democrats to abandon the search for a liberal Rove: “A smart Democat will study Rove and do the opposite.”