TPM's Josh Marshall: CNN Iraq poll

[babylonsister]

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/014851.php

The front blurb on the new CNN Iraq poll is sufficiently to-the-point that I'm going to quote it in its entirety ...

Public support for the war in Iraq has fallen to a new low and Republican support is beginning to waver, a poll published Tuesday found. In the latest CNN-Opinion Research Corporation poll, 69 percent of those polled believe things are going badly in Iraq, and anti-war sentiment among Republican poll respondents has suddenly increased.

Dick Lugar's very public pulling of the plug on the president's policy is an indicator of the trend.

The number referenced toward the end is 38% -- the number of self-identified Republicans who say they oppose the war. (I wasn't able to find a partisan break-out of the numbers in the CNN data. So I'm not clear what the number jumped up from.)

This all puts in stark terms the intense anxiety now palpitating Republican hearts in Washington, DC. One number is 38%. Another number is 17, the number of months before the 2008 election.

President Bush gives every indication that he intends to keep troop deployments at their current level through January 2009. Sure, if everyone chills out in Iraq and finally throws him the parade the president is holding out for, he'll begin bringing the troops home. But on planet Earth it's stay through course through 1/08.

The president's ability to pull that off -- both in terms of raw votes and public sentiment -- rests almost entirely on a solid phalanx of support among congressional Republicans and 2008 Republican presidential aspirants. They don't have to be for the president's war or his conduct of it. But they need to stay resolutely opposed to Democratic efforts to end it.

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[ClassWarrior]

1. We're doing it, people... Let's increase the pressure.

Never Give Up.

[babylonsister]

2. I don't know if we're doing it;; might be their own political skins they're

concerned about, nevermind the blood spilled in between.