It's mostly a BIG myth. Were there once large isolated pockets "hillbillies" of Scots-Irish/German/Welsh/Cherokee/Shawnee descent living there? Yes, way back in the 1920s and 1930s at the latest. But, gross stereotype aside, "Appalachia" is just as modern today as downtown DC, perhaps more, with most folks wired to the internet and enjoying a decent standard of living, based on their blue collar and even white collar, professional jobs. My grandfather was an independent mine owner and my dad grew up in the 1950s in a thoroughly middle class household (with TV sets and telephones, by gosh!) And there are numerous people from Appalachia today serving in the U.S. military. "Hicks," they are not.
Are there still pockets of certain families who live there, way back up in the "hollers," who subscribe to the stereotype? Yes, but they are few and far between, and the media ALWAYS seeks them out to make their generalized statements about how poor and how bad off Appalachian folk are. It's really pathetic!
My point here is that the Goldwater Institutes's analogy is false and even disingenuous in the extreme.
Carolyn