The NY Times:

A stream of bad news out of Iraq, echoed at home by polls that show growing impatience with the war and rising disapproval of President Bush’s Iraq policies, is stirring political concern in Republican circles, party officials said Wednesday.

They are referring to Republican party officials, as in:

"There is just no enthusiasm for this war,” said Representative John J. Duncan Jr., a Tennessee Republican who opposes the war. “Nobody is happy about it. It certainly is not going to help Republican candidates, I can tell you that much.”

Representative Wayne T. Gilchrest, a Maryland Republican who originally supported the war but has since turned against it, said he had encountered “a lot of Republicans grousing about the situation as a whole and how they have to respond to a lot of questions back home.”

***

Grover Norquist, a conservative activist with close ties to the White House and Mr. Bush’s senior adviser, Karl Rove, said: “If Iraq is in the rearview mirror in the ‘06 election, the Republicans will do fine. But if it’s still in the windshield, there are problems."

Why the sea change?  Ezra Klein says it is partly because of Cindy Sheehan, partly because of the Iraqi Constitution deadline failing, partly because the bad news from Iraq (the death toll rate for August is the worse it’s been since April 2004, sixteen months ago).

Maybe so, but I prefer Shakespeare: “the truth will out!”