When it hit 39% I was pleased but surprised, 35% shocked and I figured he had hit bottom - but 31%... damn! The erosion is complete with liberals (7% approval) and moderates (28%). Now he is losing conservatives (52%).
"You hear people say he has a hard core that will never desert him, and that has been the case for most of the administration," says Charles Franklin, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin who studies presidential approval ratings. "But for the last few months, we started to see that hard core seriously erode in support."[update] I didn't realize that Truman hit 22%, Nixon 23%, Carter 28%, and Bush 41 29% approval rating at their lowest points. Of course, approval rating is only one half of the story. Disapproval ratings are important too. Truman and Nixon had the worst of these at 65% and 66% respectively, Bush is currently at 65%! Wow. So, this may actually be the celing of disapproval, but the approval rating may still drop. I suppose when your guy is the failure, it is easier to say you no longer approve than it is to say you disapprove, it hurts just a little less.
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Let me be a pessimist here: the hard-core right is so angry with GWB's lack of support, that the core rallies in the next election to elect an even more hard-core right-wing president and congress.
The hard-core right isn't big enough. The marriage of convenience between libetrarians, fiscal conservatives, and the religious right isn't so convenient anymore that the leaders are so incompetent and are not protecting our liberties nor acting like conservatives. Bush is managing to stain the whole conservative movement. Maybe someday people will carelessly throw around the label conservative like they use the word liberal as an insult. Let me put a positive spin on it. In the 2008 election, there there is a third party that splits off a lot of republican votes.
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