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Map of the US after the 2004 presidential election shows where the winning votes have to come from. Victory comes from counties and small towns. McCain and Palin have to carry them all plus enough from the cities to reach the tipping point. THAT is why Palin's small-town roots are spot-on. Sorry, no USA Today link accepted but maybe below will help. Prepare to see red. http://www.usatoday.com/news/politicselections/vote2004/countymap.htm

Sarah Palin mania transformed John McCain's presidential campaign as the Republican duo made their first appearances after claiming their party's White House nominations. In a sweep through the swing states of Michigan and Wisconsin, Mr McCain was met by the kind of near-hysterical crowds previously seen only at campaign events for his Democratic rival, Barack Obama. More than 6,000 exultant supporters turned out on Friday night in Sterling Heights, a town in Michigan's Macomb County, home of the Reagan-Democrats, the small town blue collar voters who propelled Ronald Reagan to the White House in the 1980s and hold the key...

DILLONVALE, Ohio -- Barack Obama attended a barbecue and grilled Republicans on the economy yesterday in eastern Ohio, a region cool toward him in the March primary and important to his chances this fall. Obama, spending his third day in the state since Friday, spoke at New Philadelphia yesterday and greeted supporters at a farm in Dillonvale, south of Steubenville on the edge of economically hard-hit Appalachian Ohio. He argued at Kent State University's Tuscarawas campus that Republicans are not discussing the economy at their convention in St. Paul because of how bad it is, and that the GOP and...

Last night in Montgomery, Alabama we did a concert for the Buckmasters organization. As the name implies, Buckmasters promotes hunting and their convention every year is attended by all kinds of people, but the good ol' boys in their pickup trucks with the rifle racks, the big knobby tires and Dale Earnhardt, Jr. racing decals make up a big part of the attendees. The streets of Montgomery were teeming with big guys in camo. They were friendly folks, quick to smile and not afraid to render an opinion on anything from their favorite deer rifle to the current presidential election....

Sen. Barack Obama has added a Lynchburg appearance with Sen. Jim Webb to his pass through Virginia this Wednesday. Webb and Obama will hold a town hall meeting with voters, which will focus on improving the economy and Obama's plans for a tax cut for middle-class families and $4,000 in college tuition tax credits, according to the campaign. The event is free and open to the public. Earlier Wednesday, Obama and former Gov. Mark R. Warner will visit Martinsville. There, they will meet with workers and families who have been affected by what the Obama campaign calls the "failed trade...

RENO, Nev. | Sen. Barack Obama is taking his campaign to the rural backroads that helped him win early primaries but later slipped from his grasp. The presumptive Democratic presidential nominee's small town-hall meetings are aimed at showing voters that he understands their economic plight. Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama listens to a question at a rally Sunday at a high school in Reno, Nev. Rural voters delivered Nevada delegates to him in January, but abandoned his campaign in later primaries and caucuses. (Associated Press) "This election is about whether or not we are going to sustain and maintain...

The sea of shining, hope-filled faces that routinely flood Barack Obama's rallies would be an alien environment for the grizzled features and tobacco-stained temperament of Dave “Mudcat” Saunders. His preferred habitat is up a tree gunning down deer or on the mud flats — which lent him their name — catching catfish, part of an endless struggle with Appalachian wildlife. Along with his Confederate flag bedspread, the stag heads on his walls, his preference for profanity over punctuation, he would horrify what he calls the “northeastern elitist, Metropolitan Opera wing of the Democrats”. But, as one of the party's few...

BELLEVILLE, Pa. -- The folks in this picturesque mountain community with red barns and Amish buggies have been voting overwhelmingly Republican in national elections for decades. But tough economic times in Mifflin County and in rural areas all around the country have created possible openings for Democrat Barack Obama. President Bush won nearly 70 percent of the county's vote in both 2000 and 2004, but the standard of living here has declined steadily during his administration. The farm equipment factory that employed 500 workers here is closing. So is the milk plant. Farmers are facing skyrocketing feed and fertilizer costs,...

RICHMOND, Va. -- Former Virginia Governor and Democrat Mark Warner has succeeded in a state that has traditionally voted Republican and some are wondering if Barack Obama will be able to do the same. The state's demographics have made it a battleground in the upcoming presidential election. In fact, rural Virginia could make the difference between a Republican or Democrat in the White House. Virginia, however, hasn't voted for a Democratic President since Lyndon Johnson in l964, but Democratic rural strategist Dave "Mudcat" Saunders insists that inside every rural Virginia Republican is a Democrat trying to get out. "The question...

“The Appalachian voting bloc will be critical in the … 2008 presidential election,” former Democratic National Committee executive director Mark Siegel says. Yet his broad statement comes with its own geopolitical caveat: location. “It all depends on what part of Appalachia you are talking about,” says Siegel. “If they live in Pennsylvania and Ohio, then, yes, without a doubt they are the key voters. If they live in West Virginia, then no, because for the Democrats that is not a state that is in play.” Appalachia is not a single state but a region that has its own unique frame...

"Hick." "Hillbilly." "Redneck." "Inbred." "Cracker." "Ridge Runner." I heard and self-effacingly used them all when I left the mountains of Appalachia to attend college in the great metropolis of Williamsburg, Va., in the '80s. I was mercilessly ribbed as a rube when I brought along my sky-blue JCPenney suit—with reversible vest—and my stack of Willie and Waylon albums, and entered a world that was as foreign to me as I must have seemed to my fancy William & Mary roommates from the private schools. Imagine my surprise at their surprise when, thinking nothing of it, I casually mentioned that I...

Go to http://my.barackobama.com/uniteforchange and enter zip code 18702 (Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, a city of 50,000 or so that is almost entirely blue collar DEMOCRATIC in terms of its politics). The map shows Unite for Change events within 50 miles. Unite for Change events in Wilkes-Barre: ZERO Unite for Change events in Scranton (90,000 people): ONE In other words, the Obama campaign could not find one single person in DEMOCRATIC Wilkes-Barre who would associate his or her name with this phony smile on top of an empty suit. In nearby Scranton, which also is blue collar Democrat, only one person was willing...

This time it's a duly certified, establishment-vetted, card-carrying member of the Mainstream Media who's been caught, tried and convicted by the always watchful PC Police. This time it was no Howard Stern or Don Imus, or even a football coach lettin' 'er rip at a press conference. This time it was NBC's own, always respectable if not downright pedestrian Andrea Mitchell, aka Mrs. Alan Greenspan. Goodness. What did she do? It seems the lady went and referred to an area of southwestern Virginia as "redneck, sort of bordering-on-Appalachia country." Ooh-wee!The linguistically delicate of southwestern Virginia are still squealing. These easily...

CHESTER, Ill. -- The rookie state senator from Chicago had driven 340 miles to explore southern Illinois, but Barb Brown could muster only 20 Democrats in this small town on the Mississippi River to have breakfast with him. She asked her niece and sister-in-law, who were helping in the kitchen, to come out to pad the audience. "We tried to convince people that they needed to come out and meet with this senator from Chicago, who on top of everything else was African American," Brown, a circuit court clerk, said of the 1997 gathering. "We had people looking at us...

Johnny Telvor was not happy about Barack Obama becoming the Democratic presidential nominee. Not happy at all. Standing outside the sturdy courthouse in the sweltering heat of a West Virginia afternoon in the small town of Williamson, Telvor smoked a cigarette and bluntly gave his opinion of Obama's historic mission to be America's first black president. 'We'll end up slaves. We'll be made slaves just like they was once slaves,' he said. Telvor, a white Democrat who supported Hillary Clinton in West Virginia's primary, said he planned to vote for Republican John McCain in November. 'At least he's an American,'...

It isn’t just West Virginia. We saw those same lopsided majorities for Clinton -- three and four to one -- in southwestern Pennsylvania, western counties in Virginia, and eastern Tennessee. We’ll see more such blowouts in Kentucky’s eastern counties on May 20. Who are these people and what are they thinking? They live along a geographical belt of the country roughly corresponding to the Appalachian Mountains stretching from upstate New York to Alabama. Many call the area Appalachia and describe the people as “backward”. Such characterizations are both unfair and inaccurate. These people have been there a long time. Migration...

WHITESBURG, Ky. -- In analyzing the returns from last week's West Virginia Democratic primary, a phalanx of reporters and commentators have explained Hillary Clinton's landslide victory by pointing out that West Virginians are a special set of Democrats, white, low income and undereducated.

You have GOT to be kidding me. Thats Obama trying to make amends with those bitter, gun clinging, bible thumping, xenophobe rural voters in Watertown, South Dakota. Powerline: Apparently Obama chose to hold his rally in a "livestock arena" where, according to the Times, there were "wood chips and even cow chips scattered on the floor." I assume the Obama campaign chose the venue with the idea that these rustic visuals would enhance his populist credentials, but it would have been easy to find a more comfortable venue--Watertown Stadium, say, or the Watertown Civic Arena. As for the speech itself...

As Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., avoids any real campaigning in West Virginia, the former president of the United States is out there ginning up resentments. Bill Clinton has the right to say whatever he wants, of course. But he's a smart man. Brilliant, even. He can do the math. He must know that it's quite improbable that his wife, Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., will be the Democratic presidential nominee. So what purpose does it serve for him to barnstorm a state like West Virginia and tell rural voters that Obama and his elitist political/media cabal allies are mocking Appalachia? He's...

Barack Obama met with reporters Friday in Indianapolis and admitted the obvious: "We've had a rough couple of weeks. I won't deny that." The next couple of weeks will show just how rough. The roiling controversies -- over his remarks about rural voters and his ties to his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr. -- have cast new doubts over the Illinois senator's ability to win over white working-class Democrats. Tuesday's two primaries will offer fresh data on his appeal. Sen. Obama is strongly favored in North Carolina, while Indiana is seen as a toss-up. If Hillary Clinton gets...

Apex, N.C. (AP) -- People who suggest Bill Clinton might be hurting his wife's presidential bid more than helping it haven't spent much time in the small towns where he draws adoring crowds of Democrats who wish he could serve a third term. While the former president has angered some blacks with his comments about race, many voters in North Carolina, Indiana and elsewhere express deep affection for him, the last Democrat to occupy the White House in nearly three decades. They often cite him as the main reason for supporting Hillary Rodham Clinton over Barack Obama. Surely in the...

Last week in Terre Haute, Ind., Mr. Obama explained that the people he had in mind “don’t vote on economic issues, because they don’t expect anybody’s going to help them.” He added: “So people end up, you know, voting on issues like guns, and are they going to have the right to bear arms. They vote on issues like gay marriage. And they take refuge in their faith and their community and their families and things they can count on. But they don’t believe they can count on Washington.” This is a remarkably detailed and vivid account of the political...

Well, he's done it again. Barak Obama has inadvertently parted the curtain and allowed us to have a peek behind his carefully crafted stage persona. Yet he even outdid himself this time, when he showed his disdain for people of faith as well as gun owners, deriding both groups as "bitter" while clearly characterizing them as weak and misguided. Starting in the 1960's the Democratic party abandoned its roots as "the party of the working man." It is now run by arrogant elitists like Michel Moore who see people who actually go to church as rubes, and gun owners as...

Perhaps the greatest lesson to be learned by Democrats from this week’s “bitter” brouhaha is that when you get advice about how to hook rural, white, blue-collar voters from a guy named Mudcat, you’d best listen. Dave “Mudcat” Saunders—Democratic strategist, bluegrass enthusiast, and general pied piper of the “Bubba vote,” as he calls it—had a little-noticed fight with liberal bloggers back in June 2007 that perfectly presaged this week’s controversy. “I have bitched and moaned for years about the lack of tolerance in the elitist wing of the Democratic Party, or what I refer to as the ‘Metropolitan Opera Wing.’...

People who cling to guns vote, too By: Roger Simon April 15, 2008 06:57 PM EST Barack Obama thought he was among friends. That was his problem. He is an urban sophisticate, and he was talking to other urban sophisticates. He was in San Francisco last week explaining at a closed-door fundraiser how the rubes of small-town America often do foolish, misguided things when the economy turns bad. “It’s not surprising that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigration sentiment or anti-trade sentiment,” the golden-tongued orator from Illinois...

I'm about done with Obama over this mill-closures-drive-small-town-losers-to-guns-and-God business. If you're running as a glamorous blank slate on which people project their own utopian fantasies, you've got to be very careful not to give the game away - especially when the game turns out to be the usual cliched elite disdain for the great unwashed. I mention in the current issue of NR how odd it is that Michelle Obama is in many ways more condescending on the stump than Teresa Heinz Kerry. Now her husband's at it, too. As Ed Driscoll says: Leave it to Obama to make John...

Poll shows Republicans need to work hard to bring longtime constituents back to the fold Republicans have lost significant support among rural voters over the past three years. But the GOP still plows a fertile field in its efforts to regain rural support. That’s the central conclusion of a national poll of rural voters conducted by the Center for Rural Strategies and scheduled for release today. “There is no realignment of rural voters,” said Bill Greener, a communications specialist whose GOP media firm, Greener and Hook, paired with the Democratic research firm of Greenberg Quinlan Rosner to conduct the survey....

Governor emphasis on tollways, private road-builders has generated urban and rural unrest Rick Perry's political problem with transportation, to the extent that he has one, may be that he's trying to douse a fire in 2006 that won't ignite for another 10 to 20 years. His critics say, no, the problem is that Perry wants to charge us for the water. What isn't in dispute is that the Republican governor and his appointees over the past six years have turned Texas transportation on its head, moving the state from financing public roads solely with taxes to a system that would...

CAMBRIA, N.Y., July 31 — Reaching out to rural voters in New York and elsewhere in the nation, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton called on Monday for increasing federal support for struggling farm communities to revitalize rural America. In a speech delivered on a 152-year-old family farm, Mrs. Clinton called for major federal investments to expand broadband Internet access in rural communities, promote the development of alternative fuel sources like corn-based ethanol and encourage medical school graduates to practice in agricultural areas. “We can build a new rural future,’’ Mrs. Clinton said, after listing economic problems that she said have led...

THE GREAT DIVIDE Ever since its first European settlements, in the early 1600s, America developed as two completely different republics. We have been politically divided ever since, and will always remain so. This is because our two founding republican traditions are both opposite and irreconcilable. On one side of the divide were the agrarian republicans like Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. They gave us the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, with their foundation stones of equal creation, personal freedom, and the inalienable rights of every citizen. Theirs was a republic of innate virtue, where crime and vice were nothing...

The only Democrat to unseat a Republican member of the U.S. Senate in the last two cycles - Mark Pryor of Arkansas - told a gathering of frustrated centrist Democrats a couple of years ago that one of his out-of-state consultants did some research and concluded that Pryor ought to talk about his religious faith in every speech. Pryor said he was wholly comfortable doing that, and pretty much did so. He also ran a television commercial showing his family with bowed heads around the dinner table. He earned 54 percent of the vote while Democrats were getting their clocks...

BAKER CITY (AP) — A group of rural Democrats is hoping state Democrats will agree to add more explicit support of the right to bear arms to the official party platform. The gun control issue costs them dearly at election time in parts of Eastern Oregon, Baker County Democrats said. The county party has drafted a resolution that it hopes will be taken up at the state party platform committee when it meets this weekend in West Linn. The resolution states, in part, “The Democratic Party of Oregon resolves as follows: To recognize and support the right to keep and...

Can political consultants Dave "Mudcat" Saunders and Steve Jarding win rural voters back to the Democratic party? Roanoke, Virginia "YOU'RE SLOWER than cream rising on s--. Haul ass down here so we can get this piece knocked out, Brotha!" As I barrel down I-81 in Virginia's Blue Ridge country, Dave "Mudcat" Saunders is growling on the other end of the line. He first entered my consciousness in the summer of 2003, like some force of nature sent my way by the Color Gods of Feature Writing.Back then, I was one of a group of short-straw reporters assigned to cover Bob...

Toeing the Borderline By Craig Crawford, CQ Columnist Immigration is the next big thing in political hot buttons, but who wins and who loses? Both parties are divided within their own ranks on how to position themselves for maximum advantage on an issue that is rising quickly toward the social and political surface. Both sides agree it could be a deciding factor in many races in next year’s midterm election.

Immigration is the next big thing in political hot buttons, but who wins and who loses? Both parties are divided within their own ranks on how to position themselves for maximum advantage on an issue that is rising quickly toward the social and political surface. Both sides agree it could be a deciding factor in many races in next year’s midterm election. “It is the strongest issue out there for the blue-collar white males,” says Dave “Mudcat” Saunders, a Virginia-based Democratic consultant who is co-author of an upcoming book, “Foxes in the Henhouse,” which will suggest ways his party can...

RENO, Nev. (AP) - Sen. John Kerry lost the presidential election partly because Democrats "neglected rural America," Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid said Wednesday. "I think around the country people just thought they could win in the cities," the Nevada Democrat told The Associated Press. Reid said he expects new Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean to help reverse that trend, especially in the South and West, and he predicted Democrats will close the gap Republicans hold in the Senate in the off-year elections. "We are going to pick up Senate seats in 2006, it's only a question of how many,"...

COLLEGE PARK, Ga. (AP) - Seven candidates for chairman of the Democratic National Committee promised Saturday to address the concerns of Southern voters, saying they had learned the lessons of the past two elections. "You want to know my Southern strategy, show up," said Howard Dean, the former Vermont governor who dropped out of the presidential race during last year's Democratic primaries. Dean and the other candidates seeking to replace Terry McAuliffe as the face of the Democratic Party spoke before a Southern audience at the first of several regional caucuses to give Democratic Party officials a chance to hear...

Some say Bush's showing signals a right turn in southern IllinoisDECATUR - Retired factory worker Jake Durbin worries that America's values are slipping away faster than the thousands of manufacturing jobs that have vanished from this one-time blue-collar stronghold. "Even the commercials are X-rated. It's ridiculous. People are just tired of it," says the 74-year-old from Decatur.That's why he sided with Republicans on abortion and other moral issues, helping President Bush coast to a nine-point win over John Kerry in historically Democratic Macon County. The central Illinois county voted against Bush four years ago and lost more than 3,700 manufacturing...

As the new year approaches, major questions loom for Georgia's two dominant political parties. Both have little time — and control of state government at stake. For Republicans, it's how to govern. Glenn Richardson (R-Dallas), who will be speaker of the Georgia House next year, has begun to lay the groundwork. Fewer bills will pass and the ones that do will be judged on four points, he said. Among them: Whether they reduce the size of government, strengthen the traditional family, lower the tax burden or increase personal responsibility. "Unless proposed legislation answers yes to one of these questions, it...

A close analysis of Ohio, which turned out to be the key swing state in the presidential election, shows that President Bush won thanks to a pitch on morals that went beyond evangelicals to Roman Catholics, a strong effort to turn out rural voters and a last-minute tax break for farmers, small businesses and families.

A lot of Florida Democrats scoffed when President Bush flew into the little Democratic stronghold of Gainesville two days before Election Day. And as Democrats chuckled dismissively, some 17,000 people from nearby rural counties such as Gilchrist, Lafayette and Dixie drove in to cheer the first sitting president since Grover Cleveland to visit their area. Then those bucolic, often overlooked counties produced some of the most dramatic Bush victory margins in the state. Now many Democrats are rethinking long-held assumptions about how they can win Florida. The emerging post-election gospel: It's past time for Democrats to start fighting hard for...

Lakeville, Mass. -- They may be separated by no more than a liquor store counter, a yard fence or a narrow road strewn with the withered oak leaves of autumn. The constant images of George W. Bush and John Kerry on their television screens have been replaced by scenes of fighting in Fallujah and the death of Yasser Arafat. But the rifts in this small Massachusetts town, almost two weeks after the presidential election, remain so deep and so persistent that friends and neighbors wonder whether they can ever be repaired. "We have to unite, or else we're going to...

........At Baldie's Pizza in Lakeville, owner and Kerry supporter Michael Mastrangelo, 48, said he won't talk politics with his mostly Republican customers. "They're the majority. We're the minority," Mastrangelo shrugged, adding, dismissively, before he disappeared in the kitchen: "Bush won. It's not a big deal. Our deficit will continue to grow. Our troops will continue to die." "But you support our troops, right?" interrupted his daughter, Christina Mastrangelo, 23. Her boyfriend is a Marine in Iraq, and although she voted for Kerry, she said there must be "something right about Bush" that made most U.S. troops cast their ballots for...

States with more mobile homes as a percentage of total housing units voted predominately for Bush.

George Bush owes his triumph to the conservative values of small town America. America’s moral majority is made up, not of zealots, but ordinary folk who care. Welcome to the heart and soul of America. A sign greets visitors outside a truck stop with a resounding: "Let freedom reign." There is one white, wooden evangelical church and lots of Bush-Cheney posters along the roadside. The message on the way out is: "Support our troops." This is Crittenden, Kentucky, a Bible-belt hamlet where the sale of alcohol is banned. Yet it is not completely stuck in a prohibition era time-warp. People...

Bush is leading Kerry by 12 points among rural swing states, according to a Center for Rural Strategies poll released Saturday. Among likely voters in these states, Bush is at 53 percent, while Kerry is only at 41 percent. The 80-55 Coalition for Rural America performed the non-partisan poll, which looks at the impact of rural states on the election. Bush’s lead is clearly outside of the 4.4 point margin of error. "I believe this will be sufficient to tip the scales in several critical states and give the president a victory overall,” said Republican strategist Bill Greener of Bush’s...

EAU CLAIRE, WI – Today, The Wisconsin Farm Bureau Federation, the state’s largest farm organization, announced its endorsement of George W. Bush for President.  Today’s endorsement marks the first-ever presidential endorsement in the Farm Bureau’s eighty-four year history.  48,190 member families belong to the Wisconsin Farm Bureau.“We are endorsing President Bush because Wisconsin farm families have benefited from his leadership. His support of initiatives in the state has helped agriculture grow to be a $51 billion part of Wisconsin’s economy,” said Bill Bruins, president of the Farm Bureau, and a dairy producer from Waupun. “President Bush’s leadership on farm programs,...

Sen. Zell Miller urges gun-rights audience to support Bush campaign CONCORD - With the sound of stock cars zooming by as a backdrop, Democratic U.S. Sen. Zell Miller of Georgia Friday urged gun owners to support President Bush's re-election. Miller spoke as part of a National Rifle Association rally at Lowe's Motor Speedway before the Busch Series SpongeBob 300 race. It was the influential gun lobby's first rally in conjunction with a NASCAR race, said Chris Cox, the organization's chief lobbyist. Former President Bill Clinton has credited the group with Al Gore's defeat in the 2000 election. "NASCAR nation is...

"He (Kerry) also made campaign stops meant to play to southeast Ohio's strong gun-rights voters. In Pike County's city of Buchanan, Kerry's motorcade stopped at the Village Grocery Store, where he paid $140 for a hunting license he plans to use during a hunting trip and campaign stop in Youngstown this week." "Can I get me a hunting license here?" Kerry asked store owners Paul and Debra McKnight.

Kerry Supporters Few In Mid-Michigan Town Email to a Friend Printer Friendly Version (TV5) Vassar-- This time of year the talk of the town in Vassar is usually the upcoming pumpkin roll. But judging from the yard signs that line the road as you drive into town, pumpkins have been replaced by politics. The latest buzz is the new Kerry-Edwards campaign headquarters that has opened up downtown. In a city that is largely Republican; many Vassar residents are not taking to it very well. At Betty Lou’s Restaurant TV5 was able to find only one Kerry supporter. Lyla Fabro says...