We pointed earlier to Kung Fu Monkey's discussion of the "Crazification Factor," in which he suggests 27 percent as the theoretical lower limit of presidential approval ratings. This was the percentage of the vote that Michael-Moore-moshpit-veteran Alan Keyes got running against Barack Obama in the Illinois senate race.
Dohiyi Mir takes another stab at fixing this lower limit, factoring in the current low-tide figures for both the president and vice president:
So what's his floor? Maybe somewhere between Cheney's 19 percent and Bush's own 35 percent in the latest CBS poll? Heck, I'll just split the difference and say it's 27 percent.
Hmmm.
It's dismaying that President Bush retains the approval of more than a third of the country while insisting on his authority to torture. But, to continue our nonscientific analysis of these poll numbers, perhaps this apparent public endorsement of torture can also be quantified.
Dick "Waterboard" Cheney has been the one playing "Bad Cop" in the administration's campaign for torture (see, for example, "Cheney Fights for Detainee Policy"). And as the numbers cited above show, he's polling about 16 points lower than his "Good Cop" boss. This isn't really how we're supposed to be reading polling data, but I wonder if we can glean from this that support for torture runs at about 16 percent.
(If you haven't yet read it, Fareed Zakaria has a good, pointed summary of this appalling "debate" over the unthinkable and indefensible.)
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