Like antsy dogs before an earthquake, some Republicans sensed trouble. They were barking about the deficit, chasing their tails over the immigration proposal. A number had even begun baying about Vice President Dick Cheney. But when the tremor struck Monday (on the evening news) and the strong aftershocks continued Tuesday (in the morning newspapers), the party seemed astonished at the real cause of their prescient unease: President Bush.The Chron takes a look at Bush's most recent polls, and finds a lot of trouble. Me? I'm only curious about the one where half of the people said that Bush is a uniter. Where have those people been for the last three years?The White House and Republicans came face-to-face with a pair of new national surveys that not only show Democrat John Kerry leading the president in the horse-race question (For whom would you vote if the election were held today?) but also find Bush trailing even more distantly in other key measures of voters' underlying sentiments. Taken together, the surveys are much more dire news than the White House had been predicting and for which it has been struggling to steel the faithful.