The weekend after the Lamont win and the foiled airline terror plot I suggested that "last week was the first solid week for Republicans in some time. " Those two events were followed by last Thursday's ruling, by a Jimmy Carter-appointed judge in favor of the ACLU, against the Bush administration's NSA wiretapping program aimed at intercepting al-Qaeda communications from overseas.

In the first batch of polls (CNN, USA Today/Gallup, NYT/CBS, Rasmussen) taken after all three of these events, the RealClearPolitics Poll Average for President Bush's Job Approval has risen to 40.8%, while the RCP Generic Average has closed to single digits, Democrats +8.5%. This shouldn't be misconstrued as evidence that everything is great for the GOP heading into the fall elections, but it is the first time in almost six months both RCP Averages have crossed these respective levels (Bush over 40% and the Generic deficit less than 10%). This is significant, and it's not a coincidence that it comes on the back of these three high profile news events.

The Left-wing netroots crowd along with the NY Times is all atwitter about the latest polling suggesting the public's negativity toward the war in Iraq is at an all time high. The number one story on BuzzTracker for much of yesterday - with blog posts overwhelmingly from the Left - was a report on the CNN poll indicating opposition to the Iraq war was at an all time high. The NY Times' write-up this morning on the NYT/CBS poll focuses heavily on Iraq and is titled "Poll Shows a Shift in Opinion on Iraq War." However, as I mentioned following Lamont's win in Connecticut, political pundits and reporters make a mistake by conflating rising unrest toward the situation in Iraq with support for the Dean/Pelosi/Lamont position on Iraq. This is because a portion of the negativity on Iraq is frustration from conservatives that the U.S. has not been aggressive enough with its enemies in Iraq and elsewhere. These people upset with Iraq, are not MoveOn.org type voters.

So from a political standpoint, when looking at national polls, the numbers for the Generic Ballot and Bush's Job Approval are far more relevant in their implications for November's mid-terms than specific polling on Iraq. And to the degree the press focuses on Iraq-related polling and not the change in the President's Job Approval or the Republican vs. Democrat ballot test, they are potentially missing a shift in the political landscape. We will need to watch to see whether this bounce for President Bush and Republicans is just a temporary boost from terror-related news or a permanent and more sustained turn.