According to one of the GOP’s most prominent pollsters, this very well could be the case:

The recent White House shake-up was an attempt to jump-start the administration and boost President Bush’s rock-bottom approval ratings, but have those efforts come too late to salvage the presidency? A prominent GOP pollster thinks that may be the case.

“This administration may be over,” Lance Tarrance, a chief architect of the Republicans’ 1960s and ’70s Southern strategy, told a gathering of journalists and political wonks last week. “By and large, if you want to be tough about it, the relevancy of this administration on policy may be over.”

A new poll by RT Strategies, the firm headed by Tarrance and Democratic pollster Thomas Riehle, shows that 59 percent of Americans disapprove of Bush’s job performance, while 36 percent approve — a finding in line with other recent polls.

Tarrance said it would be extremely difficult for any president to bounce back this late in his administration and reassert influence on Capitol Hill when his approval rating barely exceeds his party’s base support and half of all adults surveyed said they “strongly disapprove” of his performance. An overwhelming 73 percent of independents disapprove of Bush’s performance, and two-thirds of those “strongly disapprove.”

The new poll of 1,003 adults was conducted April 27-30 (after Bush had picked a new chief of staff, budget director and press secretary) and was released at a conference sponsored by the Cook Political Report. It contains plenty of other bad news for Bush and the Republican Party, and suggests that the growing unpopularity of the Iraq war may be turning this year’s midterm congressional elections from local to national issues.

Forty-eight percent of respondents said they would like to see the Democrats back in control of Congress, while 37 percent want Republicans to remain in charge. The war looms large as a concern of voters, the poll shows, along with jobs, health care, gas prices and immigration. Combating terrorism — long the president’s strong suit — is far less of a concern.

Well it is too late for this administration. Short of another 9/11 attack on the country and Bush coming out like he did the days after (maybe I should not have given them that idea), nothing is going to save Bush now. The problem is that Bush and Republicans always blow off polls. They think that makes then look more like “a regular guy”. Well it isn’t working.

People complain about polls all the time but fail to realize that it is our only voice in government besides elections. When we got four years between Presidential elections and six between Congressional then the only way to get our opinion out as a whole is through polling. Polls should be embraced by politicians and used as a gauge of how their job performance is.

The only other option we have is an amendment to the U.S. Constitution making it possible to recall any politician at any time with an appropriate number of votes. Of course this would be a far better option and something I would like to see in the future. If every person in Congress and in the White House knew that the people as a whole could go out, get signatures on petitions and take to the polls to vote them out then you would see a reduction in scandal and them not working for the people.