When you lose the heartland, you...well, you lose:

The town, by all accounts, once gave Bush the benefit of the doubt for a war he said would make America safer and a mission he said was accomplished four years before Behrle died. But funeral by funeral, faith in the president and his project to remake Iraq is ebbing away.

Deep into a battle with no visible end, many Republican and Democratic voters here say the cause is no longer clear, the war no longer seems winnable and the costs are too high. [...]

...small towns in the heartland and the South have provided the Bush administration with some of its most steadfast backers. But that support has cracked amid the echoes of graveside bagpipes and 21-gun salutes, which have been heard with greater frequency in recent months in small Midwestern communities. [...]

Like so many Tipton residents who saw the war delivered like an unwelcome package when the cortege passed, Pelzer realized that it took her son's death for her to focus on the war.

"I don't know that you can win," she said of the chances of victory in Iraq. "But if you can't accomplish what you need to accomplish, get them out of there. There's been enough. One is too many."

It goes without saying that we feel for anyone who has lost a son or daughter because of Bush's illegal disastrous invasion. It's too bad that it takes the death of a loved one to open their eyes enough to see that "one is too many"?