Urban is defined by wikipedia as a town of more than 50,000 living close to each other. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_area#United_States) There are a lot of cities with 50,000-100,000 that still have tractor pulls, county fairs, town halls, truck stops, and people who enjoy corndogs. In fact, from my experience traveling around this country, I would say more people identify with what the author apparently considers "rural" then they do with being urban - even if statistically they are urban.

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Silly. The rural Great American Heartland, where men wearing crisp designer jeans drive huge spotless tractors while the womenfolk sit back making those charming country crafts items. Uh huh. But here in the real world, much of that farmland was taken over by developers and mega-farm corps back in the '80's, pushing farm families out, and taking down the economy of surrounding towns. Most never were able to get back on their feet before the most recent economic collapse. Those periodic spurts of prosperity that we hear about rarely trickle down to the rural communities. The Great American Heartland, where Republicans (and their "values") are adored, is a fantasy.

Get past the stereotypes. Rural people aren't uneducated, naive or stupid. Conservative ideology is not popular out here; at the very least, it isn't practical. At it's worse, it contradicts/directly opposes the religious beliefs of most rural Americans. In real life, conservative politics (from the time of Reagan up to today) is the worse thing that ever happened to rural America, wiping out more farms and driving more people into poverty than the Dustbowl of the Great Depression. Thanks to conservatism (from both Republicans and Democrats), we no longer have a "social safety net" to help people keep their families together to get through the hard times. (Hate to burst any bubbles here, but many, many rural families have needed to use welfare on occassion, understanding that welfare was simply insurance---you pay into it with your taxes, like you pay premiums for any other kind of insurance policy.) As a result of conservative policies (the anti-New Deal policies), we have seen significant increases in alcohol abuse and suicides out here. Talk to even those who identify themselves as "conservative", and you will be stunned by just how progressive---often downright socialist!-- their ideas are in comparison to what we hear from politicians and the media. And our politicians know it.

The Great America Heartland, with its waving fields of grain, is a marketing prop. Period. Politicians couldn't care less about real rural America. After all, this isn't where the money is (or the votes).

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