A similar minority support making abortion illegal in all circumstances, and the mushy middle can't make up their minds and believe they can sound reasonable by saying they are against the "on demand" question but also against the "in all circumstances" question. As a fact, they are clueless and there is nothing moral about the position of this mushy middle. You can point to the more than majority that oppose the opponent's policies and the more than majority that oppose the conservative one, and both are correct. As usual, polls can be made to say whatever you want by spinning the terms of the question, but it is no way to decide policy, and no assurance that people will actually support you in a vote that actually counts.
Similarly, you can get a majority to say they are against "socialism" or any other swear word. But they will also say they are against touching social security or medicare, want new prescription drug coverage, want bank deposits guaranteed by the FDIC, etc. They simply will not acknowledge that that entails "socialism", which to them means something from eastern Europe in the cold war.
And the American people are not impressed with your judgement as to when our military is defeated and where it is needed, or the soundness of your judgments in the matter. Or Rumsfeld's, for that matter, more to the point. They want victory and they want it yesterday, not having delivered that combination, they will hold it against you not in your favor.
"But that isn't a reasonable expectation", "on any reasonable analysis, they 'should' support my positions and policies". Well they aren't reasonable and they don't. They judge us by the consequences of our period in power, which to them are a messy continuing war that isn't as pressing at the moment, but still is keeping their sons on far flung battlefields dying for ingrates; and economic crisis complete with the largest fall in household net worth in more than a generation. They don't much care how you spin polls, they just look at that overall performance and declare it utterly unacceptable.
Which doesn't mean they won't get worse, and declare that unacceptable, too. They well might. They are empirics, not philosophers.
The real lesson to draw from the last 8 years would be items like (1) arrogantly deciding to win Iraq on the cheap with a "go small" military solution, opposed at the time by all the experienced brass as inadequate, but pushed by Rumsfeld and his braintrust, failed spectacularly after the initial breakin. (2) Picking immigration as the biggest priority for a second term political offensive was Stupid with a capital S. (3) Letting Lehman fail in a disorderly manner to avoid a charge of "bailout" for about five days cost $10 trillion and counting and was criminally insane.
You don't get to mess up policy calls that big and have another go because you are in favor of puppies. Blow those and you get booted. Period.
Conservatism means facing facts...