There are few "rural" Democrats in PA.
Johnstown isn't rural. That's Big Labor Country. Call them bitter-clingers and they don't care.
There is only one "swing" area in PA. That is the old coal region around Scranton and Wilkes-Barre. That is largely ethnic Catholic, there are some traditional morality people there who have gone for Santorum and Toomey.
The reason PA has turned is because of the Philadelphia suburbs, which used to be Republican territory. Those five highly populated counties turned in the early nineties and have not turned back.
That's where I was born and raised. I know longtime Democrat voters who refused to vote for Obama last time and won't vote for him this time. But the magical, mythical voter seems to be the one who voted for Obama in 2008 and is now switching to Republican in 2012.
I can tell you the best way to "swing" a voter to the Republican side is to get them watching Fox News or listening to talk radio. They are Democrats largely because they live, eat and breathe the MSM. The MSM has made them afraid to even try listening to conservative media, by demonizing it as "right-wing extremists" and that kind of thing. But if you can get them to start listening/watching, you can "deprogram" them and turn them Republican in about 4 to 8 years. Democrats don't think and act in a vacuum or by sheer randomness. Their brains have been programmed and they can be deprogrammed with enough time being exposed to the truth.
1988 is the last victory by a Repub Pres. Candidate, hence rural dem voters who seem religious, seem to not like moderate Republicans. Texas does not have this problem because usually dem rural voters lean towards Republican Pres. Candidates because they can't stand their big government brethren, ergo, they have more sense from a blue dog perspective.