Per Rasmussen, he’s getting just 41 percent.

Disaster.

President Obama now earns his lowest level of support yet against a generic Republican candidate in a hypothetical 2012 election matchup.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that a generic Republican earns support from 47% of Likely Voters, while the president picks up 41% of the vote.  Four percent (4%) favor some other candidate, and eight percent (8%) are undecided.  (To see survey question wording, click here.)

Last week, the generic Republican received 48% of the vote, the highest level of support yet, while the incumbent earned 43%.   The GOP candidate has now out polled the president in eight of 11 surveys conducted weekly since early May.  Prior to this survey, the Republican has earned 43% to 48% of the vote, while support for the president has ranged from 42% to 45%. Rasmussen Reports will provide new data on this generic matchup each week until the field of prospective Republican nominees narrows to a few serious contenders.

But it’s not just Obama going down the tubes. His people on the Hill are just as screwed.

In the Generic Congressional Ballot, Republicans hold a six-point lead over Democrats for the week ending Sunday, July 17.  The GOP has led on the ballot every week since June 2009.

The generic congressional poll is 44-38 for Republicans. If you apply that number to the Senate, in which of the 33 seats up for grabs next year 23 of them are Democrats, a 44-38 base vote in favor of the GOP could be devastating. If the Republicans start with a six-point edge and couple that with attractive candidates against bad Democrat incumbents like Sherrod Brown, Debbie Stabenow and Claire McCaskill there could be a lot of carnage.

These numbers indicate that despite what the legacy media polls are attempting to make the public believe the Republicans have been winning the debt limit debate in the public eye. That won’t translate into a legislative victory for the GOP, of course, because only having control of the House simply isn’t enough to win one and the folks doing the negotiating for the Republicans aren’t markedly better than the people on the other side as they’d need to be to turn that disadvantageous position into a victory.

But it does mean that deficits and debt are Republican issues – and winning Republican issues. It means the public recognizes Obama’s leadership on fiscal matters is garbage. And it means that even though the president might get a bump out of whatever deal is reached on this debt limit issue, it’s likely to be short-lived – particularly if said deal doesn’t result in a quickening of the economy. And since there will be no deep budget cuts this year coming as a result of whatever deal is made, in six months or a year it will be very difficult for Obama to sell himself as a newfound fiscal conservative despite the inevitability of his trying.