Put this poll in your pipe and smoke it

Conservative bloggers have been peeing in their pants lately with delight over polls that show great public dissatisfaction with the Democratic-controlled Congress.

They ignore, of course, the fact that the low numbers for Congress reflect, in part, great dismay that lawmakers aren't taking a harder stance against the Bush administration. The right-wingers want us to think that the polls reflect an anti-liberal bent among the public, which is nonsense.

And the conservatives have got nothing to say about a Pew poll showing that Americans favor the Democratic Party over the Republicans by a margin of 15 percentage points. Karl Rove's dreams of a permanent Republican majority are gone with the wind, as this piece notes.

How can this be?

The latest Fox News poll shows that more Republicans than Democrats approve of the job the Democratic-controlled Congress is doing.

Well, that's because antiwar Democrats are disappointed in the recent vote by Congress to approve funding of the Iraq war without setting a timetable for withdrawal of U.S. troops.

Another surprise in the Fox poll is that almost half of the Republican respondents consider Democrat Barack Obama "honest and trustworthy," and two-thirds of them consider him "likeable."