If so, they are idiots. The President NEEDS all the support he can get; unless the 50% RAT voters have changed their minds since the Gore debacle, this could be a VERY close election. The Pres has already pissed off a good deal of his base with a number of missteps he has taken on certain issues. I am willing to write off campaign finance "reform", Medicare "reform", illegal alien amnesty proposals, and most of the rest of this nonsense. But there are limits. The AW ban is "the line in the sand". And those morons who expect to receive healthy campaign donations from the grassroots conservatives better see the writing on the wall.
In some ways that might sound logical as they think something like "where else will the gun owners go?"
The problem is they don't consider the fact that they will pick up few if any from the gun grabbers but will alienate a large group of voters. If they are like me, they probably will not vote for the Dems but will just refuse to vote.
Then they've figgered wrong.
Maybe they figure no votes will be lost and some will be gained? Republicans always line up to vote for the "lesser of evils" in my experience, and some antigun moderates will be persuaded to the Republican side of things by the AWB passage.