IMPEACH BUSH

The week had the feel of 1974. Republican members of Congress marched to the White House to deliver a frank message to an embattled president: You are a liability.

Three decades ago, it was Watergate. Now, it's Iraq.

President Bush's meeting with the 11 Republican House members grew out of a sudden decline in the party's fortunes that has recently come into sharp relief.

The evidence of the trend is anecdotal and quantifiable: Public opinion polls show that the electorate has shifted to the left since the 2004 elections, with the war a leading drag on Republicans.

The situation for Nevada Republicans is less dire. Although they are not immune from the national trend, they are helped by a steady infusion of Californians, many of whom left that state to escape taxes.

Republican operatives and political observers say the party must act quickly, or face the prospect of a political wilderness not seen since Watergate.

David Frum, a former Bush speechwriter, issued a warning to readers of the conservative magazine National Review: "Have Republicans absorbed how much trouble their party is in? To the (limited) extent that we do, we tend to attribute everything to Iraq  - as if Katrina, the Schiavo affair, corruption in Congress and the intensifying irrelevance of our domestic-policy agenda did not exist. And so we demand from our candidates ever more fervent declarations of fealty to an ideology that interests an ever dwindling proportion of the public."

A Newsweek poll last week had the three leading Democratic presidential candidates beating the three top-tier Republicans in every matchup. That's nine potential races, and nine Democratic victories.

Perhaps a stronger indicator is that Republicans have dispensed with their customary discipline and optimism and are in open dissent. In a column last week, Washington Times editorial page editor Tony Blankley, a favorite of conservatives, said the Iraq war alone was causing the "virtual collapse of the Republican brand appeal."

David Brooks, conservative columnist for The New York Times, wrote recently: "The Republicans suffered one unpleasant event in November 2006, and they are headed toward an even nastier one in 2008. They are like people quietly marching to their doom."

Here are the numbers: According to a recent Pew Research Center survey, in 2002 the country was evenly divided along partisan lines, with each major party garnering 43 percent of the public's support.

Today half the public identifies with the Democratic Party, compared with 35 percent who align with Republicans. Also, the public is more supportive of a social safety net and more liberal on hot-button social issues.

Carroll Doherty, associate director of the Pew Research Center, said the results show that the political pendulum has shifted considerably to the left since Republicans won control of Congress in 1994.

The reasons are clear: Moderate swing voters once viewed the Republican Party as efficient and effective in its management of government. That brand image crumbled after Hurricane Katrina, according to a Pew poll in September 2005, which found that 71 percent of independents thought the president could have done more in his handling of the relief effort.

The Iraq war has been a tragedy for tens of thousands, but a boon for book publishers, who have produced one best-seller after another attacking the war's prosecution, as well as its strategic premise. A CBS News poll last month found that 65 percent of independents favor decreasing the number of troops or removing all of them, while 61 percent favor a timetable for withdrawal. Unaffiliated voters' distaste for the Republican Party revealed itself in 2006, as 57 percent broke for Democrats, after the two parties split those voters in 2004, according to exit polling.

Those moderate swing voters were discomforted by the Schiavo affair. A January 2006 Pew poll found that nearly three-quarters of the public thought Congress should have stayed out of the Terri Schiavo case.