Rural Americans are still close to half the population, Rural Americans can still demand that the government not trample their rights because the cities don't work. Rural Americans can still demand that interaction with government not have to be part of everyday life.
Think about how often in your life you intersect with government. See Mass Transit? Your taxes at work. You local school? Federal dollars come with federal strings attached. Hear the weather on the radio? National Weather Service competing with private weather companies. Drive a car? Massive federal regulation on those puppies. Want to paint your house? Government controls the kind of paint we are allowed to use (no VOC's, no odor, no oil base, no staying power). Want to build something on your land? If you have zoning and building codes it's probably because your community isn't eligible for government grants to complete government mandated projects (like ever increasing water standards so your water tastes like a swimming pool) unless they meet certain requirements like having "planning". Used to be only the communist countries had 5-year plans.
Government is massively involved in our lives today, because we have allowed our representatives to cede their power to the unelected bureaucracy - the people who have to increase their programs to claim success and increase their funding. My grandparent's remembered a different world, one where your main contact with government was the Post Office and the tax collector. Government didn't tell them what to feed their children, or what they should feed their horses. They didn't have to ask the Army Corps of Engineers if they could fill in the low spot in their back yard (today you are ok with that as long as no one complains - if they do complain the full force of the federal government lands on them).
Can we turn back this massive government intrusion into our life, liberty and pursuit of happiness? If we can, it will be the rural people who lead it. The next "unpleasantness" will be rural vs urban, and rural folks do hold the upper hand, if only they'll take time to notice it. Cities don't grow their own food, and they can't get supplies from somewhere else without it traveling through "flyover country".
Can we start again with the republican party? Do we take back the democrat party from the Soros wing? Do we let both those collapse and form a viable third party? Or do we st back and keep watching as we incrementally become every bit as enslaved to the government as the citizens of Cuba?
Of course, smaller government (not almost no government) and less government employment works.
Problem is that the Democrats grow dependence and government employments to secure a permanent voting block.