For the first time, senior Republican consultants and lawmakers are warning the White House that Bush's base is perilously close to deserting him. The
poll underscores their concerns: By an 8-point margin, voters are more likely to call themselves Democrats than Republicans; there was no gap in self-identification a year ago.
Mea culpa if someone else is diarying this at the same time.
I was just getting discouraged today, reading the lunchtime batch of articles about Kerry's and Edwards' criticisms of Bush. Every reporter writing about about a Democrat's words seems to spin in the Republican reaction as a matter of course, but when writing about Republican dumbassedness they don't often consult the opposition to model a right-thinking response for voters. How will we ever overcome that?
And then I noticed that there were 8% more of us than there are of them.
We can take them.
Other interesting tidbits from
this poll include the following:
Given a choice in the survey, 42 percent favored cutting spending on Iraq to pay for relief efforts on the Gulf Coast, and 29 percent wanted to delay or cancel Republican tax cuts. That's a whopping 71 percent backing options that Bush doesn't even have on the table.
That's AP's Ron Fournier wording it that way, by the way.
A whopping 71% see the common-sense good-government solutions that BushCo ignores. Surely, SURELY! the GOP era must come to an end if we all see so very clearly that we've bought a pig in a poke.
Bush's best hope may be that Democrats miscalculate as they struggle to find a unified voice post-Katrina.
We couldn't possibly give him this one, could we?
UPDATE: To summarize some results from the poll, which is in PDF format and not so easy to cut and paste bits of:
- He's totally losing his "leaners". 23% still strongly approve, but the weaker approve categories are dwindling. You might just be seeing the real base in that number.
- 41% is strong (21%) + weak Republican ID. 49% is strong + weak Democratic party ID.
- 65% think we're spending too much in Iraq.
- Only 11% would cut funding for other domestic programs to pay for Katrina recovery, while 42% would cut spending on Iraq (there's Grover Norquist's base in that 11% number).