I think a reasonable hypothesis for a shift would be that a lot of neoconservatives have withdrawn due to the lack of facts that could reasonably support their positions. Before the war, a reasonable --albeit still weak-- argument could be made that Iraq was a threat to the US, for example. Now that the WMDs are nowhere to be found, most neoconservatives have retreated. You still have some guerilla fighters like "heartsurgeon" who just make nonsensical posts and rarely defend themselves when challenged. Then you have CADkindaGUY who doesn't usually make any arguments, instead he relies on personal attacks and overabundant levels of sarcasm (just another form of agression). I've run into a couple reasonable conservative posters, but that's it. The way things currently are there just isn't much of argument you could make for Bush or conservatives generally. Basically, if we had found WMDs you'd see far more conservatives posting I think (if it's true they used to be here). As it is, they have no leg to stand on and the majority of conservatives here are fanatical diehards who don't see reason as predicate to posting.