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The Newsweek poll has 28% who will commit to voting Republican for President in '08, which is about the best measurement of True Believerdom available at present.
A while ago I came up with a 1% per month 'rule'- about 1% of the electorate gives up its last solid support for or trust in Bush/hardline Republicans per month of the Bush Presidency.
There was lots of softish, varying, disapproval on the left side of the political spectrum for the first four years or so (~50 months), and since then there's been a lot of soft approval on the conservative half of the spectrum, which keeps this linear decline from a stellar height somewhat obscured. In November 2008, after 48 months of Bush as elected leader, he had 52% approval and 48% disapproval. He's been kept around 38% over the past 6 months or so by all the campaign efforts and calling in of favors and playing endlessly on benefit of the doubt.
It's been interesting to watch as this loss of trust broke the 42-45% Republican leaner bloc boundary (summer/fall 2005: discontent coincident with the Hurricane Katrina FEMA failures), the 38% partisan moderate Republican bloc boundary (the Iraq is hopeless crisis of October/November 2005: Bush then did the occultic Believe in Ourselves Strategy for Victory in Iraq pep rally address in late November), and the 32% Right Republican bloc boundary (the Republican gross demoralization and admission of incompetent governance of July 2006). For that last one, Rove decided that there was a need to appeal to the Right, which meant to ratchet up the hate and fear, to run the fall election campaign all negative and on terrorism etc.
I think that in 3-5 months this process of decay of trust will hit the 24% mark and break across the boundary into the rightmost, and in a sense last, Republican bloc- the 24% hardline conservatives. Nixon resigned when that same last 24% bloc cracked and its support for him vanished in practice. We're now starting to see the wound that will bleed out Bush support breaking open, the debate starting about whether the GOP is in fact "conservative".
We've seen the progressive elimination or subjugation of the Democrats, centrists, and moderate Republicans in the Administration, with classical Right wingers dominating classical conservatives in the top ranks. As the popular support and policy decline continues, we're seeing classical Right wingers (Rumsfeld and the neocons, Kissinger) being downranked and/or eliminated and the Administration trying to look and act very classically conservative and un-Right. The pundits are picking this up as a lot of reversion to the Bush Sr people, image, and policies.
We've spent the first half of 2006 hearing moderate Republicans spew, complain, and incrementally give up rationalizations for keeping their Party going as it has. We're now in the middle of the classical Right wingers spewing, complaining, and incrementally giving up rationalizations for what they've made their Party do. And the conservative wing is just beginning.
I think when that 24% trust mark is hit and broken in a few months, and the bleeding out of stupid 'conservatism' becomes a torrent of (more) moronic Republican arguments in the public arena, something rather amazing will happen. The anchoring of moderates and centrists to the conservatives/Right, which has been the case for 40 years or more, will break. It will be a politically center-Right society no more.
Whether the Administration survives that...I'm sure there will be a lot more resignations and firings and retirements within the next months. Cheney and Scalia are the next big losers as their Cause dies away.
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