I have been reading some of the comments left at Free Republic with alarm. It is amazing how quick some on the right are to tear apart this President over nothing but speculation. It almost seems as if the lib’s over at DummiesU have infiltrat…

Polls from the Red States (rank-and-file polls) have been all over the map but there’s been a preponderance lately of polls very hostile toward Miers. Many of the polls in support of her came out prior to the news of her support for affirmative action. Indeed, before this, I was a supporter too. But after the affirmative action knowledge came out, with her support for race and gender preferences, the polls have been tipping strongly against her. Anybody supporting a class-based AA would be fine, but not this abhorrent form based on gender and race. She is not acceptable to the rank-and-file, and I personally know dozens of loyal Republicans over decades who will not donate another cent to the party. Only a Dem nod to Hillary Clinton for the 2008 nomination would bring the grass-roots back into the Republican Party– otherwise, this split is just far too deep to repair.

Remind me to miss the Harriett Meirs confirmation hearings next month. Quite frankly, it isn’t going to be pretty.

Laura Bush was at the Colonial Fire Hall in Hamilton, N.J., telling about 700 pre-selected ticket-holding Bush faithful why they needed to vote for her husband. The First Lady went through the usual litany of what she believed were her husband’s accomplishments, frequently invoking the memory of 9/11. And then she told the crowd why the nation needed to support her husband’s war. “It’s for our country, it’s for our children and our grandchildren, that we do the hard work of confronting terror and promoting democracy,” said the First Lady.

That’s when Sue Niederer, a 55-year-old teacher and Realtor, standing at the back of the hall, just couldn’t take it any more. “If the Iraq war is so necessary,” she called out, “why don’t your children serve?” That’s when the Secret Service came by, when Republican volunteers pushed and shoved her, and raised Bush campaign signs around her to block her from talking and to prevent the media from turning their cameras to her. A few in the crowd had tried to come to her defense, one person shouting out, “She has a right to speak. She’s a mother.” But, the “right to speak” was drowned out, as were Niederer’s own comments, by the partisan chant, “Four More Years! Four more years!”—just in case Niederer or anyone else had anything to say that the crowd thought might be high treason.

Until she spoke out, exercising what she believed were her First Amendment rights of freedom of speech and to petition the government for a redress of grievances, most had not seen her shirt. Shortly before she spoke out, she put on a T-shirt with a picture of her 24-year-old son, and the words, “President Bush, You Killed My Son.” Her son was Second Lt. Seth Dvorin, of the Army’s 10th Mountain Division. He was wounded in November 2003 from a roadside bomb; on Feb. 3, 2004, he was killed in Iraq by an Improvised Explosive Device (IED), sometimes known as booby-traps and land mines. Dvorin wasn’t trained for bomb disposal, says his mother. What he was trained to do was to be an air defense artillery officer. But, training matters little in war. His unit had been sent to locate IEDs along roads. “It was a suicide mission,” says Niederer. “They’re still sending out patrols on foot to locate IEDs,” she says.

After their son was killed, Niederer and her ex-husband, Richard Dvorin, a retired New Brunswick police officer, and Seth’s father, both sent letters to the President; the only response was a form letter asking for campaign contributions.

Paul Mirengoff, contributor to Power Line, has an excellent bit of analysis up at the Weekly Standard, but one with a bit of an O. Henry twist.