Earlier this month I pointed to polling from The New York Times and CBS News showing that the Republican Party's favorability ratings were at an seven-year low. What's more, with the exception of that single poll during the heat of the Republicans' misguided impeachment of President Clinton in late 1998, the GOP had never rated so poorly in the more than 20 years that CBS and The Times had been asking the question as it was about two weeks ago.

But Americans' opinions of the Republican Party are not fleeting, apparently. The Times and CBS came back and polled that same question on the GOP's favorability this past weekend and found that, despite the fact that President Bush's overall approval rating is up five points since the last survey was taken and despite the fact that the latest poll has a sample with more self-identifying Republicans than the last one, the low favorability ratings for the GOP have not nudged up one bit. In fact, the Republican Party's unfavorability rating notched up two points since late February, not a statistically significant move in and of itself but also not the type of downward trend that Republicans would no doubt want to see.

To make matters worse, the Republican Party's favorability spread -- 34 percent positive, 58 percent negative -- is significantly worse than that of the Democratic Party, which comes in with a not good, but not great 47 percent favorability rating and a 43 percent unfavorability rating.

If the percentage of Americans viewing the Republican Party favorably remains more than 10 points lower than the percentage viewing the Democratic Party favorably and if the Republican Party's numbers can't come up even when the President makes a small increase in the polls, the 2008 cycle is going to be much more difficult for the GOP than previously expected.