Well being that the last few posts were in response to my perspective from rural, MN, I will assure you that my town of 2000 people along the north shore of lake superior to be a pretty rural area.
Wasn't referring to you,
I was reading Irvine's post largely in context of
an article he posted on more or less this same topic ("small town values" rhetoric) a few weeks back. Based on 2004 exit polls, rural voters comprised 16% of the electorate and 59% of them voted for Bush, so they were roughly 9.4% of the Republican vote in that election--compare that to suburban voters, 23.4% of the '04 Republican vote, yet you don't hear Republicans talking about or rhetorically positioning themselves as the party of "suburban values," any more than Democrats position themselves as the party of "urban values" (17% of the Democratic vote in '04). So there's more going on here than just a targeted pitch to voters who
really do live in "rural America"; that rhetoric evokes something that's in truth independent of which size community one lives in. That's what I was getting at.
I will waste little time trying to explain rural values to you. Basically, they have a lot to do with "guns, god, and religion." They have to do a lot with personal responsibility and not waiting around for the government to solve problems through social welfare programs. They have to do with, according to a lifetime democrat-voting colleague who will be voting for McCain/Palin this year--that there is an abortion litmus test in todays democratic party that turns many people away.
I think it's "guns, God and gays"--at least, if you meant to use Howard Dean and Chuck Norris as a phrasing source.
I grew up in a town the size of yours and have spent the better part of my life since in towns that size as well, so I do understand the kinds of concerns you're talking about. But I wouldn't characterize most of them as "values," and certainly not as values uniquely characteristic of rural people. Hunting is a pastime and a way of procuring food, not a "value" (although, Scary Urban Elites Are Coming To Take Your Guns Away!! sure makes it
sound like one). Rural people are more likely to attend church regularly, because it's a major locus for socialization (and ad-hoc community charity) in an environment that doesn't offer many; but at least in my experience, they're no more likely to be personally pious than people elsewhere. In many cases, rural people don't have anywhere near the access to various publically funded services (nor to private services like abortion clinics, counseling services and daycare centers) that city-dwellers and suburbanites do, so yes, there's a certain sense of self-sufficiency there, and often also a sense of shame about being on public assistance that has much to do with being unable to keep it private in a place where everyone knows everyone's business. But that independence is easily overstated: according to the Census Bureau, rural Americans account for 25% of those on means-tested public assistance (food stamps, Medicaid, SSI, AFDC/TANF etc.), yet they're only 19.8% of the population--meaning they're overrepresented among such recipients by 25%, whereas central-city dwellers (allegedly the great 'welfare magnets,' right?) are overrepresented by only about half as much, 13%. And that doesn't even take into account other forms of public assistance, like price supports and other farm programs, that are widespread in many rural areas. (Alaska **coughcough**, the Great Plains, and the Mississippi Delta region receive the most federal funding.) So the data don't back up this 'smalltown self-sufficiency' rhetoric...and again, even if they did, why all the highly idealized emphasis on this particular group of voters, as if they're the last word in 'authentic' American 'values,' when the truth is they're less than 20% of us and shrinking? Why are so many politicians and voters who in reality don't know the first thing about rural life so eager to proclaim their loyalty to 'small town values'--what's really being said there?