I think a lot of it has to do with the way the press treats them. Its like they gang up and treat everything with pessimism distain... i.e., GWB holds press conference on up to date stats in Iraq... Reporters shrug it off and ask if he is going to fire Rove because of the Plame issue or some such nonsense. It is way past time for the President to start going directly to the people.
And just to make sure that Dimocrats don't claim that his is somehow just a GOP version of the facts, they might want to check the 9/11 Commission testimony of one Patrick Fitzgerald who stated that in his investigation into the blind sheik he had uncovered evidence of contacts between Saddam and Al Qaeda and believed that they were trying to come up with some operations against us. Somehow, the Dims want to deny reality.