http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0311-33.htm<snip>
Here in the “purple states” of the Rocky Mountain West, President George W. Bush’s job approval ratings have fallen lower than a rattlesnake’s belly. In five of our eight mountain states, Bush approval has sunk well below 50 percent with his standing in Nevada at an all-time low of 39 and Montana at a rock-bottom 42 percent. Even in the most crimson, conservative states in America—Utah, Wyoming, and Idaho—the President’s 2004 election night approval has now collapsed by an average of 10 percent with a dizzying loss of 14 percent in Vice President Cheney’s home state of Wyoming.
It has become clear that the buyer’s remorse here in the Rockies is due to more than simple disagreement with Bush’s policies. Westerns have developed serious doubts about Bush’s judgment and character as well.
A look at westerner’s disagreement with Bush policy shows this: most Americans, 70 percent, disagree with allowing the United Arab Emirates to operate six critical American ports; so do we westerners. Americans, by 52 percent in the latest polls, oppose presidential telephone wiretaps without a warrant. In the West the disapproval of such unauthorized snooping is even higher. We, along with other Americans—by a whopping 60 percent—disapprove of how Bush is handling the overall energy situation. We are overwhelmingly opposed to Bush’s relentless efforts to push roads into our last wild places and westerners are also fighting the President’s effort to sell those public lands.
It is the President’s handling of Iraq, however, that is at the heart of the public’s disapproval. What is remarkable about the latest polls is that Bush is losing support, for the first time in five years, in his strongest base-Republican stalwarts, many of whom live here in the Rockies. More than a third of those who most likely voted for Bush in both 2000 and 2004 now disagree with the war in Iraq. Independents, who narrowly voted for Bush in 2004, disapprove of the way he has handled Iraq by a whopping 69 percent.