There's no nice spin here: Today offers a triumvirate of sucky polls.

TheIowaRepublican showing Terry Branstad leading Governor Chet Culver 53 percent to 35 percent

A Rasmussen poll shows Chuck Grassley with a 55-35 lead over Roxanne Conlin

And a Polk County GOP poll showing Brad Zaun ahead of Leonard Boswell.

You can say what you want about the house effect of polls, and all these are essentially GOP internal polls. But yeah, they're all bad news.

But read deeper and what they reveal is a Republican Party that's managed to fool the electorate.

The key clue is in the Grassley-Conlin poll:

Most of the state’s voters (56 percent) consider Grassley’s views as mainstream, and 29 percent think they are extreme, the survey found. For Conlin, 34 percent said her views are in the mainstream while 42 percent feel they are extreme.

Pull the plug on Grandma say WHAT?

Chuck Grassley is no longer the aw-shucks look at the Pentagon buying $1000 hammers guy of a generation ago. Now he's a lock step party of no demagogue. While Roxanne Conlin talks truth to corporate power, Grassley is going all Dred Scott on us.

That misperception, Grassley as mainstream, Conlin as extreme, gives Roxanne an opportunity to turn this around.

The same can be said of the other races. Terry Branstad is still pandering to his right, still trying to clinch his primary two months after the fact and looking to throw collective bargaining and judicial independence in the trash.

And while I've never been the biggest Boswell fan, Brad Zaun is clearly not ready to hit major league pitching.

So no, not a good day. But it's just one day with 84 left to do. With that time and, yes, a little $$$, we can correct these misconceptions.