29%.

Anyone have an idea what finally is driving him under 30%?

If you heard Randi Rhodes today on Air America, you’d have a good clue. The more that comes out about the cover up at Walter Reed, the more that gung-ho US exceptionalists - like some military families are - will be abandoning teh Bush.

From Randi’s website today:

Joyce Rumsfeld (Rummy’s wife) was taken to Walter Reed by a close friend who was also a WR volunteer. There she was told about the filth, neglect and horror that we are learning about now. When hospital officials found out, Mrs. Rumsfeld’s friend was banned from entering or continuing to volunteer at the hospital.

The military crackdown on reporters extends well beyond Walter Reed. God knows what kind of crap is going on…

Congressman C. W. Young and his wife Bev found a soldier sleeping in his own urine 3 years ago at Walter Reed. When they tried to report it they were rebuffed at every turn.

FLASHBACK: Bev Young removed from State of the Union for T-shirt that read “Support The Troops”

FLASHBACK: The story of how the GOP purged one of their own for fighting too hard for vet care. Once done, shutting down the vets’ access to Congress began immediately.

Forgotten vets are left to deal with their wounds and their debt alone.

Meanwhile, military advisors say we have 6 months to “win” in Iraq before a Vietnam-style collapse.

Every blogger, left, middle or rightist, should be working hard to bring more of these facts to light. These stories mark the beginning of the end for Bush, as calls for his impeachment will no longer be confined to liberals who saw him for what he was long ago.

It’s a mainstream, Middle America movement now.

Some number deserve review.

The 30%-32% base that typically backs guys like Bush are a hodge-podge. There are the Pavlovians who bark on command to authoritarianism (Lakoff’s macho paternal disciplinarian model). Knee-jerk patriots are often a subset of this group.

There are the Heteropuritans (like Dr. Strangelove, strict rules apply to the dispersal of precious bodily semen) who are led by old people with declining-towards-insensate genitalia, infusing morality into biology.

There are the elitists of incestuous empire, the Royal Corporatists, whose worldview is dominated by how to make a buck off everything, no matter how noxious the enterprise.

And, of course, there are the Stupidists, who vote Republican reflexively, because it’s a family tradition or because they find themselves economically lacking and fall for the propaganda that some ‘other’ is ‘out there’ holding them back: blacks, pacifists, immigrants, gays, liberals, atheists, Muslims, liberated women, commies, etc. Marginalized economically, they also fall for the propaganda that this life requires their suffering, but if they remain rigid in their vigilance against incursions into their strict moral codes, they will be handsomely rewarded in the next life. (Not all people of faith, but the fundamentalists of many faiths, share this view, and they are not opposed to resorting to violence against infidels).

Some of these groups are permanently inflexible. Historically nearly 1 in 4 Americans will never abandon a conservative leader, no matter if he’s demonstrably corrupt, inept, dishonest, cruel, and even sociopathic. It would be unprecedented for any president to see their support fall to 20%.

The lowest ever recorded was 23% for Truman (though not a conservative, the stalemate in Korea, China’s turn to Communism, the dismissal of the popular hawk General MacArthur, and Harry’s desegregation of the military all played into the fear factors conservatives use to conquer and divide.)

Nixon had fallen to 24% support when he resigned. Bush now is 5% below everyone but these two, with only 5% remaining that can be eroded to equal Nixon’s low.

Yet if you ask historians to rate the greatest presidents, Truman has ranged between 5th and 9th while Nixon has been rated between 23rd and 34th. Carter, who had 34% support as he left office, has done slightly better, rated between 19th and 34th.

Bush rated 23rd and 19th in the only two polls of academics taken, but in 2002, he was at a largely untarnished peak and in early 2005, the wealth of information that will taint Bush’s legacy was just starting to creep into the public consciousness. Even then, of any major wartime President, only his father and Nixon rated lower in 2005.

And that’s something that should never be overlooked in calculating presidential support. Wartime presidents who succeed gain an added edge in the eyes of historians, and of the US public. Most make the top 10. The failed war presidents lag behind in the 20s and 30s. And the lowest ratings of all a