More Bad News For GOP

This is brutal:

When it comes to looking for a presidential nominee, Republican voters may not want a full divorce, but they certainly want at least a trial separation from President Bush.

In the NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll out Wednesday night, about half of all Republicans (48 percent) want a candidate who takes a “different approach” from that of the president, while just 38 percent want a “similar approach.” This is a reversal from April, the last time the question was asked, when 50 percent wanted a candidate who took a similar approach as opposed to 41 percent who wanted a different one.

It'll be interesting to see how the GOP presidential candidates deal with this particular problem, given that every one of them (except for Ron Paul) supports Bush with regard to the Iraq Catastrophe.

But then again, maybe Iraq isn't that big of an issue for the Republicans. After all, the top Democratic contenders for the presidency won't even commit to having all our troops out of Iraq by the end of their first term. I can't believe that the Democrats are basically neutralizing their best campaign issue in years by going GOP-lite on us with regard to Iraq, but there it is.