Nancy Pelosi has approval ratings nearly as low as Newt Gingrich

Do you remember when Newt Gingrich was vilified as the most hated politician in America? According to a new poll, Nancy Pelosi has approval ratings nearly as low as Newt Gingrich had then. Boston.com is reporting:

Embattled House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has approval ratings nearly as low as Newt Gingrich when he was the primary lightning rod in Congress, a new poll says.

The CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey released this afternoon found that the approval of how Pelosi is doing her job as speaker has dropped from 51 percent in January to 46 percent in March to 39 percent now.

In the new survey, conducted Thursday through Sunday while Pelosi was embroiled in controversy over how much she was told about waterboarding of terrorist suspects, 48 percent of respondents said they disapproved of her performance.

In a news conference on Thursday, she said she had been misled by the CIA -- an accusation that prompted officials of both parties to defend the spy agency and that provoked some angry Republicans to say she should put up proof or shut up and apologize.

Gingrich, the former GOP house speaker during the mid-1990s, has called on Pelosi to resign as speaker. He had his approval rating drop into the low 30 percent and as low as 25 percent in March 1997.