Republicans, Clueless to the End

President Bush will leave the White House with a 34% job approval rating, according to a new USA Today/Gallup poll. The improved rating, is better than what he has received for the past year,” and is due to Republicans, whose “approval of him rose from 67% in mid-December to 75% in the current poll.”

Seriously, 75% of Republicans approve of the job that George W. Bush has done? What exactly are they approving of? What has Bush done?

Still a large number of Republicans shifted in the final weeks to support Bush, giving him a nine-point post-election bump, which brought his approval rating up to 34% from 25%. Without it, Bush's final Gallup number would have been far more humiliating; which may have been the point.

Now Bush's disapproval rating is significantly higher than say Jimmy Carter's or Harry Truman's. Only Richard Nixon was explicitly less popular at the end of his administration than Bush is today. Thus Bush has the distinction of having the lowest final job approval rating of any modern president leaving office at the natural end of his term.