From The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
By Jay Bookman

Perhaps drawn by the drama of watching President Bush address a newly Democratic Congress, more than 45 million Americans tuned into the State of the Union speech last week, a number that was up 9 percent from 2006, according to the Nielsen ratings service.

But interestingly enough, while the overall audience for the speech grew substantially, the number of Americans who watched the speech on the Fox News Channel dropped dramatically. Hmmm. Wonder why? Maybe a lot of folks have lost the stomach for the kind of baloney served by the Fox apologists and propagandists.

According to Nielsen, Fox News drew 4.56 million viewers for its State of the Union coverage this year, down almost 2 million viewers from 2006. In fact, this year’s number was easily the lowest number to watch the speech on Fox News since Bush delivered his first State of the Union in 2002.

However, the president’s plummeting popularity isn’t merely bad for business at his favorite propaganda outlet. Republican politicians — those with presidential ambitions, as well as those just hoping to keep their seats in Congress in 2008 — also see their future hitched to that of Bush, and the thought is inspiring a palpable panic, particularly outside the South.

It’s beginning to look more and more like Karl Rove will be proved right — the Bush administration really might inspire a permanent realignment of American politics — although not exactly in the way Rove envisioned.

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