Speaking as a Texas, I can confirm that yeah, Natalie's comments pretty much killed their career overnight. The Dixie Chicks were one of the biggest female acts in America at the time, and definitely the biggest female county group since the Judds. People loved the Chicks up until that moment.
The reason it pissed people off was because it was seen as a cheap way for Natalie to endear herself to the anti-Bush crowd in England. Plus, it was relatively early in the the war in Iraq when public opinion was still strongly in favor of it (that fact seems to have been lost by history) so the Chicks were seen as namby-pamby apologists.
If Natalie would have issued an apology saying that while she was against the war, she went too far in attacking the president on foreign soil, it probably could have salvaged the group's career. But instead, she doubled down and became even more defiant, which painted her as another smug, liberal celebrity (like Michael Moore or Sean Penn) who trashes on American values abroad and then expects Americans to still financially support them.
It's not a matter of whether or not Natalie has the right to hold those views (she does) it's the fact that when your bread and butter is country music, one of the few popular music genres that has a conservative audience base, you better not shoot your mouth off an alienate your fans. The Dixie Chicks will probably always have a following in some quarters, but they'll never again command the same spot they held in pop culture like they did from 1998 to 2003.
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