Gallup: Bush Poll Rating Hits Yet Another New Low

President George W. Bush’s approval rating continues to slide: he gets little support among Democrats, tepid support from moderates — and he’s losing part of his party’s base.

President Bush’s approval rating has slumped to 31% in a new USA TODAY/Gallup Poll, the lowest of his presidency and a warning sign for Republicans in the November elections.

The survey of 1,013 adults, taken Friday through Sunday, shows Bush’s standing down by 3 percentage points in a single week. His disapproval rating also reached a record: 65%. The margin of error is +/- 3 percentage points.

“It is a challenging political environment,” acknowledges Tracey Schmitt, a spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee, “but we are confident that ultimately voters in November will recognize that a Democrat Congress would simply not be equipped to ensure either economic or national security for our nation.”

Bush’s fall is being fueled by erosion among support from conservatives and Republicans. In the poll, 52% of conservatives and 68% of Republicans approved of the job he is doing. Both are record lows among those groups.

Moderates gave him an approval rating of 28%, liberals of 7%.

That should answer readers who email us that if you DARE criticize George Bush you simply cannot be a moderate. There’s a lot of criticism of the Bush administration going around these days.

But most troubling for Bush is that the conventional wisdom may now have to be recast: he seems to be losing some of his core supporters:

“You hear people say he has a hard core that will never desert him, and that has been the case for most of the administration,” says Charles Franklin, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin who studies presidential approval ratings. “But for the last few months, we started to see that hard core seriously erode in support.”

And how is he doing in historical terms? Not too terrific in that department, either:

Only four presidents have scored lower approval ratings since the Gallup Poll began regularly measuring it in the mid-1940s: Harry Truman, Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter and the first George Bush. When Nixon, Carter and the elder Bush sank below 35%, they never again registered above 40%. Truman twice sank into the low 30s and then rose into the 60s, but the third time his rating fell, it stayed below 40% as well.

You have to ask yourself what the administration can do to reverse this trend. Is picking a fight over the new CIA director and polarizing the country the best course? Perhaps: if Bush & Co. press the right buttons maybe he can regain at least part of his base.

But then you look at the remaining moderates: will that number go down, too? And what lies on the horizon in terms of foreign crises, Karl Rove’s legal status and other matters?

The most likely outcome? Bush is NOT going to get much more popular. He will likely continue to lose support. And those who steadfastly support him will do so solely because (a) they support parts of his agenda (b) they don’t want political opponents to get a foothold.

People often talk about another 911 and how Bush could then rally the nation. At this point distrust and dislike of him seemingly runs so deep that even if there was another terrorist attack he would never be able to generate the kind of support and trust he had in the aftermath of 911.

Each time he seemingly picks a fight to rally his base, or goes with an appointment or decision that could have been handled in a way where he basically could have achieved the SAME END with less political bad feelings, his support will either to continue to go down — or opposition to him will solidify to a point where he may never be able to recover it.

It would appear at this point Bush has hit rock bottom and he can’t go down any further. But many have said that before.

So should we finally say it?

Bush, Rove & Co have been painted as a crew that has great political skills.

Wrong. They know how to divide up the electorate and win elections. But they’re shockingly inept in the area of using politics as a way to aggregate — versus aggravate — interests.

UPDATE: Does Bush have “nowhere to go but down?”