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GOP's Heartland Appeal Just Plain Heartless

Posted Sep 10, 08 12:23 PM CDT in Politics,  Opinion 

(Newser) – Sarah Palin can’t say enough about the virtues of small-town Americans, the good, honest folk “who do some of the hardest work,” skip college and join the military. But they have to work so hard and skip college because they’re not doing very well, Thomas Frank writes in the Wall Street Journal—and they’re not doing well because they keep electing Sarah Palins.

Midwestern voters keep choosing Republicans who sing odes to small-town America while propping up its mortal foes. John McCain gets a 0% voting rating from the Kansas Farmers Union, but he seems convinced that won’t matter, Frank concludes: “Just choose a running mate who knows how to skin a moose and all will be forgiven.”

Source Wall Street Journal

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This undated photo shows Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin fishing in Alaska.   (AP Photo)
Patty Smith, left, and Helen Martin listen as John McCain and Sarah Palin, address supporters at a campaign rally in Lebanon, Ohio, yesterday.   (AP Photo)
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[McCain] seems to think that small-town people can be easily played. Just choose a running mate who knows how to skin a moose and all will be forgiven. - Thomas Frank, Wall Street Journal

Leave the fantasy land of convention rhetoric, and you will find that small-town America, this legendary place of honesty and sincerity and dignity, is not doing very well. - Thomas Frank, Wall Street Journal

For decades now we have been electing people like Sarah Palin who claimed to love and respect the folksy conservatism of small towns, and yet who have unfailingly enacted laws to aid the small town's mortal enemies. - Thomas Frank, Wall Street Journal

If any farmer in the Plains States looked at McCain's voting record on ag issues, no one would vote for him. - Donn Teske, president of the Kansas Farmers Union and ex-Republican

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John McCain • Sarah Palin • Republican • agriculture • Midwest • small towns


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