Under near withering assault from Republicans, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has seen her approval rating suffer its first significant drop in her brief tenure wielding the gavel, according to a new independent poll.

While she still remains more popular than President Bush, Pelosi's job approval rating dropped to 46 percent, according to an AP-Ipsos poll conducted in the middle of last week. Her disapproval rating climbed up to 44 percent, which is a sizeable shift from mid-January when the same poll had Pelosi's approval-disapproval rating at 51-35. That mid-January finding held steady in late February, when the Washington Post/ABC News poll showed Pelosi's job performance rated at 50-31 in favor of her.

It's certainly noteworthy that the AP-Ipsos poll was conducted during the peak of attacks against the speaker for leading a congressional delegation to meet with Syrian President Bashar Assad. Those attacks included Vice President Dick Cheney's remarks on the Rush Limbaugh radio show and President Bush's comments during a Rose Garden press conference. And she remains more popular than Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) was when he became speaker, settling in at an unpopular 40-48 rating by late January 1995.

But Pelosi's drop in popularity serves as an early warning for Democrats. In separate interviews last week, a pair of House Democratic leaders circled the wagons around their speaker and vowed a strong defense.