When the CBS News poll came out this week showing that President Bush’s job approval rating has dropped to 34 percent, some Republicans were outraged.

It’s slanted! Republicans were underrepresented in the survey! You can’t trust it!

Maybe so. Maybe CBS stacked the deck so that the poll is off by two, three, maybe even four percentage points.

Which means the president’s job approval rating might really be 38 percent! Yessssssss!

The problem for George W. Bush is not a bit of bias in the latest poll. It’s that, by any standard, he is losing support for many of his policies and, perhaps most important, he is losing support among Republicans.

If the president had solid support from voters of his own party, there would be a job-approval floor below which he could not sink. But he doesn’t.

Look at all the categories of questions asked by CBS News — approval or disapproval of Bush’s handling of the economy, Iraq, terrorism, and energy — and you’ll see that Bush’s support never rises to 80 percent among members of his own party.

On the economy, 68 percent of Republicans approve of the job Bush is doing.

On Iraq, 61 percent approve of Bush’s performance.

On terrorism — the strong suit — 78 percent of Republicans approve of Bush’s work.

And on energy — after Bush devoted a good deal of post-State of the Union time to promoting his alternative-fuels proposal — 53 percent of Republicans approve of his performance.

It used to be that Republican and Democratic approval numbers were mirror images of one another. That is, if about 85 percent of Republicans approved of the job Bush was doing in some area, then about 85 percent of Democrats disapproved.

Now, because of the GOP desertion of Bush, those numbers are lopsided.

On the economy, 84 percent of Democrats disapprove of the job Bush is doing, against the 68 percent of Republicans who approve.

On Iraq, 86 percent of Democrats disapprove, against the 61 percent of Republicans who approve.

On energy, 75 percent of Democrats disapprove, against the 53 percent of Republicans who approve.

The only area where there is some semblance of symmetry is Bush’s handling of terrorism, where 72 percent of Democrats disapprove, against the 78 percent of Republicans who approve. Put them all together, and they are bad, bad, bad numbers.

And things are no better for Congress. Just 28 percent of those surveyed say they approve of the way Congress is doing its job.

And — this is truly striking — more Republicans disapprove of the job the Republican-controlled Congress is doing than Democrats. Fifty-nine percent of Republicans disapprove of Congress’s performance, while 55 percent of Democrats do.

And by the way, a full 68 percent of independents disapprove of Congress, too.

Put it all together, and what does it mean for Republicans trying to keep control of the House and Senate in November? It means there’s no place to turn.

It’s always nice to have a bedrock group of supporters that you can count on regardless of events. Republicans used to have that. Now they don’t.

The most important factor in Bush and the GOP’s woes is Iraq. And the new poll, like a number of surveys before it, shows that most Americans don’t think the war has been worth it.

CBS asked, “Do you think the result of the war with Iraq was worth the loss of American life and other costs in attacking Iraq, or not?”

Overall, just 29 percent say the war has been worth it. Sixty-three percent say it has not, and 8 percent say they don’t know.

Republicans still support the war — 58 percent say it has been worth it, while 33 percent say it has not. But Democrats are more united in their opposition to the war; 82 percent say it has not been worth it, while just nine percent say it has been.

And independents don’t support it either — 69 percent say it has not been worth it, while 27 percent say it has.

But wait. The poll was slanted, right? Well, at the very least the CBS survey showed the importance of wording in polls. When CBS asked the Iraq question a different way — saying, “Do you think removing Saddam Hussein from power was worth the loss of American life and other costs of attacking Iraq, or not?” — more people support the war. In response to that question, 41 percent say the war has been worth it, while 53 percent say it has not and 6 percent don’t know.

But the bottom line is that a majority of those surveyed, in both questions, says the war has not been worth it.

Will all of this mean Republican defeat in the November elections?

Well, things can change in eight months. And it’s true that Democrats don’t really have much going for them, apart from the public’s unhappiness with the Republicans in power.

But that might be enough.

York is a White House correspondent for National Review. His column appears in The Hill each week.
E-mail: This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it