These are people who not only voted for him, but also gave money and volunteered their time. These are people who spent hours working phone banks, making yard signs, or going door-to-door for the Bush campaign.
The "political reality" is that if those folks bail, then Bush will be lucky to get the measly 37% that his father got in 1992.
Now you know how the Liberals felt when Clinton signed the Welfare Reform Act. However, unlike us, the Democrats stuck together and Clinton was reelected in Landslide.