21%.
Down from 25% a month ago.
And 32% of voters called themselves Republican last November.
We've been saying for a while that the polls showing how "divided" the nation are, that the polls showing how "popular" George Bush was with Republicans, were skewed by the fact that so many normal Republicans had left their own party. With only the far-right conservative fringe remaining - let's call them Limbaugh Voters - it wasn't a surprise that self-declared Republicans would be so staunchly opposed to Obama and supportive of Bush.
As Chris Cillizza points out, this spells big trouble for moose and squirrel (or elephant).
The Post poll numbers show the challenge for Republicans in stark terms.The irony is that while some pundits, and Republicans themselves, love to talk about how "extreme" the Democrats are, about how beholden Democrats are to their base (we wish), the fact is that Republicans are the party of extreme, the party of base politics, as it were.
The number of people who see themselves as GOPers is on the decline even as those who remain within the party grow more and more conservative.
That means that the loyal base of the party has an even larger voice in terms of the direction it heads even as more and more empirical evidence piles up that the elevation of voices like former vice president Dick Cheney does little to win over wavering Republicans or recruit Independents back to the GOP cause.
