[benjaminthomas]

Unless you are assuming that Republicans are flexible in their support, and Democrats are not, isn't there a flaw in your reasoning? In other words, you assume that Bush's "betrayal" of Republican positions on spending will cost him Republican votes. Fair enough. But wouldn't such taking of traditionally Democratic positions win him an equal and opposite number of (or at least some) Democratic votes?

[jack gillis]

That's exactly what I think, and one of the reasons I said the movement posited by dales was "asymmetric and one way." Sure, Bush might poach a few Dem votes, but not enough to make up for the lost votes.

In other words, it takes a lot less for a weak-GOP or GOP-leaner to adopt the feeling of betrayal than it does to get weak-Dem or Dem-leaner to go all the way over and switch in the current political environment.

It's not really a GOP/Dem thing as much as it's an IN party versus OUT party thing. The party in power always has the ability to betray one of its coalition constituencies through implementing policies whereas the out-of-power party just sits on the sideline lobbing eggs.