Free Republic

Democrats point to a thousand reasons that Hillary Clinton lost the presidential election. Here is another. In political circles, it’s common knowledge that in four key states President Trump unexpectedly carried counties that Democratic presidential campaign strategists had failed to recognize as crucial terrain — sparsely populated areas of Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania. In “What I Got Wrong About the Election,” for example, published right after Clinton lost, David Plouffe, who had managed the Obama campaign in 2008, wrote that Trump’s margins in rural and exurban counties were off the charts. For example, in Madison County, an exurban area...

In the weeks leading up to the inauguration, Yahoo News visited towns and cities across the country, speaking to voters who had supported Donald Trump in the election. As the shape of his administration emerged, we asked voters if they were happy with their choice and optimistic about the future. Here is some of what we found: SANDY HOOK, Ky.—It used to be known as the most reliably Democratic county in America. In a state that had long ago gone deep red, Elliott County, located here in the winding forested hills of remote eastern Kentucky, was a true anomaly. Since...

KNOXVILLE, Iowa – One recent morning, I sat near two young men at a coffee shop here whom I’ve known since they were little boys. Now about 18, they pushed away from the table, and one said: “Let’s go to work. Let the liberals sleep in.” The other nodded. They’re hard workers. As a kid, one washed dishes, took orders and swept the floor at a restaurant. Every summer, the other picked sweet corn by hand at dawn for a farm stand and for grocery stores, and then went to work all day on his parents’ farm. Now one is...

Democrats in rural America have a blunt message for the rest of their party: We saw the electoral disaster coming — and it’s your fault. Strategists and party officials say their warnings about the party’s lackluster outreach to rural voters went unheeded by Democratic leaders for years, culminating in this month’s shock defeat to Donald Trump. A presidential candidate who actually performed poorly in many cities and suburbs nonetheless scored an upset victory because of a surge in support from small towns and rural areas. To these old Democratic political hands — many of whom hail from well outside the...

Let me make a few observations. First, eight years ago, and again four years ago, America elected a President. Fully half, give or take a couple of percent, disagreed with the outcome. There were exactly zero riots, fires, "mass protests" and similar following that outcome despite the fact that half the population vehemently disagreed with it. This time around, not so much. Now I want you think very carefully about the following. Most of the land mass of this nation is owned and resided upon by people who are in "red" (that is, the winner this time) areas of the...

Thursday, October 6, 2016: Live streaming coverage of the Donald J. Trump for President rally in Sandown, NH at Sandown Town Hall. Live coverage will begin at 7:00 PM ET. Sandown is a town in Rockingham County, New Hampshire, United States. The population was 5,986 at the 2010 census. Watch the LIVE stream of the event below: Sandown Town Hall

INDIANAPOLIS — Donald Trump’s campaign picked the richest Republican city in Indiana - Carmel -- to open its only field office in the state. But a big splash from opening a headquarters in the Indianapolis suburbs doesn’t mean the campaign is overlooking rural Indiana. It’s set to get a piece of the Trump treatment, too. In a throwback to old-style political campaigns, leaders of the Trumpian movement plan to travel to small towns to woo supporters and shower them with yard signs and other Trump-for-president paraphernalia. They’re calling it the “Early for Trump Tour.” The rural swing will be led...

BURGETTSTOWN, PA (WTOV) — A Pennsylvania farmer has created what may be the world’s largest Donald Trump campaign sign. Recently, Eddy Cashdollar had a problem, so he put one more thing on his “to do list.” “I asked everybody for a Trump sign to put on my car and put on my yard but nobody has them so I said I’ll make one,” Eddy said. And he did, mowing letter by letter, for about two hours, until he had the biggest Trump sign around. “I just made the first one and made the other ones match it,” Eddy said. The...

October 15, 2012 As Mitt Romney and President Obama get ready for their second debate, a new bipartisan survey shows a surge for Romney in a key voter group following their first debate Oct. 3. The random cell phone and landline poll of 600 likely rural voters in nine battleground states Oct. 9-11 has Romney at 59 percent among the survey's respondents. Obama's support is now down to 37 percent among rural battleground voters, a plunge of 10 percent from the actual rural vote in those states four years ago.

Rural voters who helped elect President Obama four years ago are now keeping his challenger competitive in key states. A new survey shows they favor Republican Mitt Romney by 14 points, and support for Obama is eroding. Listen Now: (AUDIO AT LINK) Monday, September 24, 2012 The nation's smallest and most remote places are providing Mitt Romney's biggest margins in battleground states as the 2012 presidential race enters its final weeks. In fact, rural counties are keeping Romney competitive in the states that are now up for grabs. That's what a new bipartisan survey indicates. The poll also finds that...

VIRGINIA BEACH, Va., Sept 8 (Reuters) - Mitt Romney was set to try another lap around the track on Saturday to win over NASCAR stock-car racing fans. Romney, the Republican presidential candidate facing President Barack Obama, will visit a NASCAR race on Saturday night in Virginia, targeting white male voters in a swing state where early voting begins in two weeks. Romney needs to win among white men by a healthy margin to offset the advantages Obama enjoys with women as well as black and Hispanic voters. A Reuters/Ipsos poll last week showed Romney with a 20 percentage-point lead among...

STAUNTON, Va. – Whether it is called General Lee Highway, as in Virginia, or Molly Pitcher Highway, as in Pennsylvania, the lives and economic strain along U.S. Route 11 tell of a country’s disappointment with Washington – specifically, with President Obama. The north–south highway, created in 1926, extends more than 1,600 miles from New York to Louisiana. It is one of those blue lines you find on a gas-station road atlas, obscured by the bold red lines of the dominant interstates. Woodrow Wilson’s home is along this road in Virginia, James Buchanan’s in Pennsylvania. In between those presidential homes is...

Guardian reporter Gary Younge reports from Prestonburg, Ky., an Appalachian coal-mining area that has seen one of its worst years, with a quarter of the families living in poverty and half of the children in Floyd County living on food stamps. And Younge found a lot of fingers pointed at President Barack Obama among the residents there:

Virginians will have an important choice to make in Tuesday’s gubernatorial election — and we believe the best choice is Republican Bob McDonnell. *break* On economic development, McDonnell wants to do more to lure businesses to Virginia. *break* McDonnell wants a $1,000 per job tax credit for companies that create at least 50 new jobs — or 25 new jobs in economically distressed areas. That’s the kind of thinking this economically distressed community needs in Richmond. It’s true that the Dan River Region’s leadership has worked hard to attract new jobs in manufacturing, technology, research and retail. But Danville has...

Angered by White House decisions on everything from greenhouse gases to car dealerships, congressional Democrats from rural districts are threatening to revolt against parts of President Barack Obama’s ambitious first-year agenda. “They don’t get rural America,” said Rep. Dennis Cardoza, a Democrat who represents California’s agriculture-rich Central Valley. “They form their views of the world in large cities.” Cardoza’s critique was aimed at Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency, but it echoes complaints rural-district Democrats have about a number of Obama administration decisions. “I wouldn’t say it’s a complete strikeout, but they’ve just got a few more bases to it when it...

GENEVA, NY--As noted in today's Philadelphia Inquirer, "mainstream media have been criticized for celebratory coverage of Obama's rise that has left [many] questions [about the president-elect] largely unanswered." It appears that the "celebratory coverage" has infected the local media as much as the national press.Case in point: President-elect Barack Obama narrowly lost Ontario County, New York, home of the Finger Lakes Times, in the 2008 presidential election. And at least two other counties in the paper's service area (Yates and Wayne), went big for Republican John McCain. So one might think that the reporters and editors of the paper would...

BRINKLEY, Ark. - Wayne Loewer's truck reveals a lot about his life. A 12-gauge shotgun for duck hunting rests on the floorboard. A blue thermal lunch bag containing elk meat is shoved under the seat, left in haste that morning by his teenage son rushing to catch the school bus. Binoculars in the console help Loewer scan his 2,900 acres of rice, soybeans and corn. The dashboard radio is set to classic rock, playing the same Lynyrd Skynyrd tunes from Loewer's high school days, when Brinkley was still a thriving small town with stores and a movie theater. His muddy...

BRINKLEY, Ark. - Wayne Loewer's truck reveals a lot about his life. A 12-gauge shotgun for duck hunting rests on the floorboard. A blue thermal lunch bag containing elk meat is shoved under the seat, left in haste that morning by his teenage son rushing to catch the school bus. Binoculars in the console help Loewer scan his 2,900 acres of rice, soybeans and corn. The dashboard radio is set to classic rock, playing the same Lynyrd Skynyrd tunes from Loewer's high school days, when Brinkley was still a thriving small town with stores and a movie theater. His muddy...

Below, Moe writes on some shocking statements by Barack Obama about "bankrupting the coal industry" in order to address global warming. Obama has it in for another industry: agriculture. Check out these statements from an interview he gave with Time's Joe Klein: As a consequence, our agriculture sector actually is contributing more greenhouse gases than our transportation sector. And in the mean time, it's creating monocultures that are vulnerable to national security threats, are now vulnerable to sky-high food prices or crashes in food prices, huge swings in commodity prices, and are partly responsible for the explosion in our healthcare...

NPR.org, October 23, 2008 · Republican John McCain was doing so poorly among a key voter group during the first three weeks of October, it seemed unlikely he could capture the presidency. That's what a newly released survey indicates. The poll of 841 likely voters in rural counties in battleground states was conducted during a three-week period from October 1-21. Rural voters were instrumental in the election and re-election of President Bush, and big Republican margins in rural areas are considered critical to a John McCain victory next month. The survey had Democrat Barack Obama slightly ahead, 46 to 45...