Military abandoning support for the GOP

Early last month, a commenter without a profile named Jason left the following:

If you think the military on the whole does not support their President, you are mistaken, and therefore attempts to characterize them as some poor captive audience that would surely speak up if they could are misguided.

The comment was in response to Bush's penchant for making speeches before military audiences, where anyone who booed him would be subject to severe punishment. March was the last time Bush made an appearance to anything but hand-picked or military audiences, when he was booed and jeered at the opening pitch of the Nationals game.
Now we see:

In its annual reader surveys, the Military Times specialist news group found Bush's approval rate among the military had plummeted from 60 percent in 2005 to just 48 percent in 2007.

Gosh, Jason, it sure seems like someone in the military might want to boo the President if they could get away with it.
Now we find out that the support for McCain among the military and their families is at most 50%. Late last year we found that that support for the Iraq effort was slipping within the military community as well. The Republicans are running a war hero whose campaign mentions his service and POW status every single day, and the military isn't buying it.

McCain has long had a "problem" with veterans groups for his stinginess on vet benefits. Backing the neocon vision of Eternal War hasn't helped win over military families, either. It's somewhat ironic that, while the wingnuts froth over "military service" and re-define the word "patriotism" to mean "complete support of the Republican agenda", more than half of those people actually serving would be considered unpatriotic by the Right because they don't support Bush, McCain, or the premise of the Iraq occupation. Thus we have a complete logical breakdown on the wingnut end: criticising the troops is unpatriotic, but the troops don't support Bush, so the troops are unpatriotic, but that is criticism, so the wingnuts are unpatriotic.

The neocons and wingnuts overplayed their hand years ago when they conflated dissent on the Iraq occupation to treason. Too many people knew too many dissenters whose patriotism was not in question for that to work. Now a strong majority says that Iraq was a mistake or not worth fighting for - in other words, unpatriotic traitors, America-haters, and defeatists. With that sorry gambit, the wingnuts lost the magic talismanic power of the word "traitor", much like the words "liberal", "appeaser", and "terrorist sympathiser" no longer elicit guaranteed rage from the public. Republicans, however, have not realised this because they know that such words work on them. Thus, the GOP will continue its bizarre effort to cast 60% of Americans as treasonous, while simultaneously imagining that these 'traitors' will vote for them. And they will continue to invoke 'the troops' in attempts to stifle dissent, even though half of those troops disagree with the GOP.

full story from AFP:

Iraq undercuts Republican support among military

WASHINGTON (AFP) — Five years into an unpopular war in Iraq, many US military voters are eschewing their traditional Republican ties to support Democrat Barack Obama for president against John McCain, observers say.
...
"I think now you're going to see -- not that it's going to be overwhelming -- but a back away from the Republican Party ... At least (the military vote will) be split this year rather than overwhelmingly Republican," said Korb, a deputy defense secretary under president Ronald Reagan.
He predicted that McCain, the 71-year-old Republican senator for Arizona, will get "at most half of the military votes," instead of the three-to-one ratio that Republican President George W. Bush won in 2004.
The main reason for the defection is the Iraq war, where 4,113 US troops have died since the 2003 invasion and for which the US government has come under fire even from the military, despite recent security improvements.
...
A Los Angeles Times survey of 1,467 people, including 631 soldiers, veterans and their families, in late 2007 found that 57 percent of military respondents believed the Iraq war was not worth fighting -- nearly the same as the overall population (60 percent).
Asked which party they trusted most to handle important issues, the military families chose Democrats over Republicans 39-35 percent, compared to a 39-31 percent ratio among the general population.

And clueless Republicans are still looking backward to 2000 and 2004 for confidence, even though things have changed radically for the GOP.