Taking a look at the latest poll from The Wall Street Journal and NBC News, I might comment on the fact that George W. Bush's approval rating is at an all-time low for the poll, making this the third poll released yesterday to show the President achieving that unenviable feat, or that Congress' approval rating has slipped noticeably down to 23 percent, above the low of 16 percent in the previous Congress but still horrible. Instead, I want to take a look at a yet unreleased set of numbers hinted at by the folks at MSNBC's First Read:

The most striking thing about the latest NBC/Wall Street Journal poll is the damage that's been done to the GOP brand. Bush is not only unpopular (his approval rating is just 29% and favorability is only 32% -- both all-time lows for him). But his unpopularity also is dragging down the image of the Republican Party to its lowest level ever in this survey (28% positive rating). For better or worse, the GOP needs Bush to improve if they want the party's image to improve.

Although it's not terribly easy to draw a conclusion from a description of poll numbers that does not contain all of the available data, these numbers do not seem to bode well for the electoral hopes of the Republican Party. And these numbers should not be viewed as simply in a vacuum, just one outlier poll making a conclusion that is not supported by the preponderance of evidence. Polling earlier this year from CBS News and The New York Times showed the exact same thing -- the Republican Party's image has seldom, and perhaps even never in recent memory, been as bad as it is today.

These numbers also track with other data from the poll. The Journal's first release of data (.pdf) contains the following question: "Generally speaking, which party more closeley shares your values and positions on the issues--the Republican Party or the Democratic Party?" By a 13-point margin, respondents chose the latter over the former, a further indication of the unpopularity of the GOP.

The political environment still can and might change profoundly before voters go to the polls to select the composition of the next Congress, as well as the man or woman to serve in the White House. But for now, the Republican Party is simply really unpopular -- so much so that it will be a drag upon whichever underwhelming comes out of the GOP's presidential nominating process.