The GOP Loves the Heartland To Death -- WSJ

[pdxmom]

Excellent article from the WSJ. It's the truth that people have to face, and stop this cult of personality.
Hopefully, Barack is correct that people aren't stupid and will vote in their best interests.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122100226859616967.html?mod=todays_columnists

<snip>

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. If you drive west from Kansas City, Mo., you will find towns where Main Street is largely boarded up. You will see closed schools and hospitals. You will hear about depleted groundwater and massive depopulation.

And eventually you will ask yourself, how did this happen? Did Hollywood do this? Was it those "reporters and commentators" with their fancy college degrees who wrecked Main Street, U.S.A.?

No. 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.

<snip>

Now, Mr. McCain is known for his straight talk with industrial workers, telling them their jobs are never coming back, that the almighty market took them away for good, and that retraining is their only hope. But he 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. Drive them off the land, shutter their towns, toss their life chances into the grinders of big agriculture . . . and praise their values. The TV eminences will coo in appreciation of your in-touch authenticity, and the carnival will move on.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

1. I'm really amazed that the Wall Street Urinal published this.

[pdxmom]

2. I was, as well. Of course, I don't know how many people in the heartland

read the WSJ and will see the truth in what was written. But I thought it was a very pointed article and hit the nail on the head.

[Earth Bound Misfit]

3. Love the title of the article

The GOP Loves the Heartland To Death


Small-town America

Small town people, Mrs. Palin went on, are "the ones who do some of the hardest work in America, who grow our food and run our factories and fight our wars." They are authentic; they are noble, and they are her own: "I grew up with those people."

But what really defines them in Mrs. Palin's telling is their enemies, the people who supposedly "look down" on them. The opposite of the heartland is the loathsome array of snobs and fakers, "reporters and commentators," lobbyists and others who make up "the Washington elite."

Presumably the various elite Washington lobbyists who have guided John McCain's presidential campaign were exempt from Mrs. Palin's criticism.

Had the author referred to her as the "Trojan Moose", one would think this story was posted on HuffPo.

[tedoll78]

4. It's incredibly sad to drive through some areas.

Abandoned buildings, boarded-up storefronts, rotting homes. I'm still pretty young, I guess, so I can only imagine how nice it all was back in the day.

It's sad that it's gotten to this point. Also kinda angering that small-town Americans largely vote for those who doom their towns to this fate.