The latest wave of public opinion polls shows that President Bush's downward spiral continues unabated. The Wall Street Journal reports that Bush's approval rating has plummeted to 37%, with CNN coming in at 36%, a precipitous 10% drop from January. And while a comparatively upbeat Washington Post survey from March 6th put the President at a 41% approval rating, a devastating assessment from the Pew Research Center showed Bush at only 33%, the lowest mark of his presidency.

There can be little doubt that Bush's Iraq quagmire is undermining Americans' support for his presidency. John Harwood in the Republican echo chamber that is the Wall Street Journal reports that Americans overwhelmingly view the Iraq war as having both weakened the United States (50% to 28%) and increased the threat from Iran (44% to 18%). The same WSJ journal survey showed Americans would support a Congressional candidate advocating withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq within a year by 50% to 35%. It's no wonder that the same President Bush who scolded the likes of John Murtha for "defeatism" and "surrender" has begun to change his tune.

The prospects for the Congressional GOP aren't any looking any brighter, as the cumulative effects of the Katrina, Abramoff, PlameGate, Medicare prescription and other scandals take their toll. The CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll shows that American view Democrats as better able to manage the economy (53% t0 38%) and the situation in Iraq (48% to 40%). The GOP gets only a 4% edge in the fight against terrorism, down from a 35 point margin over the Democrats in June of 2002. Among registered voters, Democrats now hold a staggering 16% lead (55% to 39%) in CNN's generic Congressional preference poll. Representative Tom Cole (R-OK) aptly expressed the collective shudder of Congressional Republicans, "Obviously, it's the winter of our discontent."
The latest survey from Pew Research may be the most instructive in documenting the implosion of the Bush presidency. President Bush has seen dramatic declines in support among all voters, especially independents, with his overall approval falling a jaw-dropping 17% in just 14 months. Whereas the most common one-word description of Bush in February 2005 was "honest," today it is "incompetent," with "liar" and "idiot" not far behind. More Americans now view George W. Bush as more out of touch than was Ronald Reagan during the peak of the Iran/Contra scandal in 1987.
Given the poll data, Congressman Cole is clearly right to conclude that this is the winter of the Republicans discontent. Whether Bush's woes translate into springtime for Democrats is another question altogether.
UPDATE: The news from south of the Mason-Dixon line only gets worse for the President. Outside of Alabama and Mississippi, every southern state now disapproves of Bush's job performance, including rejection in his home state of Texas by a whopping 14% (55% to 41%). And in an unsurprisingly under-reported story, Americans (including 29% of Republicans) support Senator Russell Feingold's resolution to censure President Bush.