WASHINGTON – President Bush’s political wizard Karl Rove must be smoking a peace pipe if he really thinks his boss’ only problem with the public is the war in Iraq, many political observers said yesterday.

That was after Rove declared to the conservative American Enterprise Institute that Bush’s job approval ratings may be in the dumps, but Americans still like him.

“People like him, they respect him. He’s somebody they feel a connection with,” Rove said. “They’re just sour right now on the war.”

One dispirited former top Bush official who admires Rove took vigorous exception to that analysis.

“Bush is down to 30% not because liberals are leaving him but because conservatives are leaving him,” he said. “Why are conservatives leaving him? Let me count the ways. The base is furious with him.”

Pollsters agreed.

“If you get down that low, you’ve got to be losing some conservatives. That’s just simple arithmetic,” said Maurice Carroll, director of the Quinnipiac Poll.

Lee Miringoff of the Marist Poll noted that First Lady Laura Bush sounded a lot like Rove over the weekend when she said she didn’t believe the polls because of how Americans respond to her husband.

Miringoff said this spin was sort of a reverse of the line the White House gave when President Bill Clinton faced poor poll numbers at the height of the Monica Lewinsky scandal.

“The notion then was, ‘You may not like him, but he’s doing a good job,'” he said. “Now it’s, ‘He’s not doing a good job, but you like him.'”

Most analysts agreed that Iraq is Bush’s biggest woe, but said Hurricane Katrina, energy prices, leak scandals and domestic surveillance were all hurting him.