Borrowing a page from the Democratic playbook, Republicans are beginning to refer to the currrent Democrat majority as the “do-nothing Congress.”

Apparently the latest polls agree, giving only 25% approval rating to Congress. Even President Bush has a higher approval rating than Congress. Çurious indeed.

The beltway pundits simplistically ascribe the poor showing by Congress to the war in Iraq. But they get the reasons all wrong. The popular theory is that the Democratic Congress has poor favorability ratings because we have not withdrawn from Iraq, something the Democrats “promised.” I do not remember that “promise” in the last election cycle, but let that pass for a moment.

To the extent that our poor view of Congress has anything to do with Iraq, it is simply because we are not doing enough to win the peace there. And the public is beginning to see that this Democrat Congress does not support the troops after all, and they are hindering the President’s effort to win a war. Unfavorable ratings are about a weak effort in Iraq and the Democrats’ continuing legislative effort to make it weaker still.

The President himself has enough blame already from the public. His deserved unfavorable ratings are mostly to do with hamstringing a war effort for political considerations. In other words, he has been listening to the liberal left in America and abroad much too much, and he has paid a serious long-term price in the polls for his weakness.

If Congress wants their approval ratings to go up, vote for a resolution that authorizes the President to take whatever means necessary to win a resounding victory in Iraq no matter what the cost and time. Increase the budget for it and encourage the President to send more troops. The Democrats cannot do that, of course, because they are stuck in servitude to their rag-tag minority of liberal anti-American war activists.

But that is the real story behind these poll numbers. Congress has had lousy poll numbers both before and after the Democrats took control for a variety of reasons, some of which have to do with Iraq. To the extent Iraq is the problem, it is that we are not doing enough to win. The mainstream press has this all wrong.