This article is serious business for any who are concerned about GWB's re-election. Pennsylvania had been described as a Republican "T" if you make a red county-blue county map. The northern tier counties and the midstate form the "T". Most times the "T" cannot quite make up for the RAT strongholds of Philly and Pittsburgh.
Lewistown is in the heart of Bush country but when people are hurting economically the quick fix pocketbook issues are what grab them. And an exodus from the "T" doesn't gurantee that the blues counties will become more balanced.
That's a fairly good description.
Snakehead Carville put it more bluntly: "Pennsylvania is Pittsburgh and Philadelphia with Alabama in between."
Lewistown is in the "Alabama" portion.
If Lewistown is hurting, Dubya's chances go down.
Not true at all. Most of the times, the "T" defeats the Rats. That's why we have more R's than D's in Congress and the Legislature, and why the RATs almost never win Senate and row office seats in the State. The only real competition is top of the ticket races (President and Governor), and that comes from ticket splitting RINO's in the Philadelphia and Pittsburgh suburbs.
I know many people like those described from these areas (unskilled losers to put it bluntly). They are the people who live in those regions and vote Democrat. High School drop-outs, teenage mothers, heroin addicts, etc., etc., etc. They are the people who get jobs at Wal Mart, McDonalds, and the Prison when the local factory closes, simply because there is nothing else they are remotely qualified for. The Republicans, the majority of the people there, are small business owners, people in skilled services, farmers, shop keepers, skilled laborers, and the like. You know, folks with brains. As opposed to folks who think the rest of the world owes them a living.
You wouldn't know it from reading this article, but Mifflin County is actually a tidy and prosperous little place, as a drive down State Route 655 would reveal from the many bustling farms and businesses.
You are correct. This entire issue is yet another area where the Republicans risk losing their own base. The real overarching issue here is globalism. The ruling elite of US business no longer has any loyalty to the United States or its people - people like those described in the article. The upper echelon of management in the Fortune 500 have, for the most part, received a thorough indoctrination in the Gramscian model of progressivism through control of the institutions. Like Bernard Schwartz of Loral, Inc., they will gladly sell anything to anyone. They are the literal embodiment of Marx's dictum: A capitalist will gladly sell you the rope that you'll use to hang him. If all people are to be reduced to mere commodities - individual economic units - it becomes imperative that arcane concepts like nationhood, loyalty, morality, etc. must be done away with.
Free trade with a nation like China - who litereally employs slave labor in the form of millions of political prisoners - is a lie at its core. There's nothing free about it - the slaves certainly aren't allowed the fruit of their labors are they? If the free enterprise system is divorced from transcendent moral concepts like patriotism. honesty, fair play, etc., it rapidly degenerates into a mafia-like system of ever increasing ruthlessness and immorality. In short order, open competition ceases to exist and is replaced by an oligarchical system similar to the one operating in most Latin American countries. That's what is happening to the west now on a global scale. Thus the constant cry from the Wall Street Journal for open-borders, outsourcng, "free-trade", H1B and L-1 visas, etc. Is it any wonder that folks like Kenny Lay and Bernie Ebbers view themselves as being above the law? In many respects, they literally are.
Kerry and Edwards, of course, will make all the noise about being for "the little guy", while their actual record is, if anything, even worse than Bush and the Republicans. Kerry is a "Bonesman" just as much as Bush is. You's never find that out from following the standard media coverage, though.
btt