GOP chairman Ken Mehlman sure enjoyed riffing on the "angry" Hillary Clinton earlier this year. We can't wait to hear what he says about this: "Angry conservatives" are driving approval ratings for George W. Bush and the Republican-controlled Congress to "dismal new lows" that have the party fearing "an Election Day massacre."

So says the AP's Ron Fournier in his take on the new Associated Press-Ipsos poll. As Fournier reports, an astonishing 45 percent of self-described conservatives now say they disapprove of the job the president is doing.

Overall, the AP-Ipsos poll puts Bush's approval rating at 33 percent, down three points since Josh Bolten took over as the president's new chief of staff. How bad is that? About as bad as it gets. "In the past six decades," Fournier writes, "only one president had a lower job approval rating six months before a midterm election: Richard Nixon in May 1974, the year in which Watergate-scarred Republicans lost 48 seats in the House and four in the Senate. "