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Red/Blue = Rural/Urban?

Posted by: Michael Dudley

5 September 2008 - 12:00pm

The discourse in the current presidential election appears to be pitting rural -- and presumably conservative -- Americans against urban liberals.

"John McCain has made up his mind...He's going with the Karl Rove playbook. That Republican political strategist got his former boss, President George W. Bush, re-elected in 2004 by persuading enough Americans that their nation was divided into two camps: Decent folks with conservative values and plenty of common sense; and dangerous, urban liberals who would impose Big Brother at home and expose the country to danger from abroad.

The more the Republicans encourage the notion of a divided America, the more they make those manufactured divisions real.

The Republican narrative will be subtle. It will suggest that all Americans, at least all good ones, are rural at heart. The mill worker or the secretary in Cleveland or Indianapolis or Pittsburgh has more in common with the people living outside the city than with the loft-dwelling, merlot-sipping university professors in their leafy enclaves closer to downtown."

Full Story: McCain tells a tale of two Americas: decent and rural versus urban and liberal
Source: The Globe and Mail, September 5, 2008
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