If you've lost Utah Mormons, what do you have left?

Our Vice President, Dick Cheney--he of the "Saddam did 9-11" and "the insurgency is in its last throes" school of persuasion"--is supposedly at 9% in recent public opinion polls. There is no better evidence of this than the VEEP's reception at Brigham Young University, where he sought, and eventually received, an invitation to speak yesterday.

Utah and the Mormon Church are practically subsidiaries of the Republican Party, the reddest of the red states. But the ongoing fiasco that is this administration has even managed to disgust people there. When the announcement that the VEEP would be the commencement keynoter, some students and faculty immediately created an online petition in protest of the invite. I can't remember how many exactly, but I believe the signees numbered in the thousands. Some of them spoke publicly about their objections, citing Cheney's false statements and enthusiasm for war as being inconsistent with Mormon Church and BYU standards of behavior and character. Of course, they did not prevail, but the fact that there was ANY protest, let alone a protest that made the papers and brought in thousands of studnets, is remarkable.

And it got better, or maybe worse if you're the VEEP, yesterday when the entourage arrived. He was met by a crowd of picketers in Salt Lake City, and could not avoid another noisy group when he approached the BYU campus. This is a pigs-flying kind of event--it NEVER happens. BYU students are generally the silentest of the silent majority, loyal soldiers, God, flag, country people, students rated least inclined to debauchery nationwide.

I think Bush's solid 30% might be in jeopardy. We can only hope.