In a statement that had all the enthusiasm of a hostage video, Sen. John Thune of South Dakota, a “reasonable” Republican and occasional critic of Donald Trump, endorsed the former president this week. The two other “Johns” angling with Thune to be Republican leader when Sen. Mitch McConnell steps down at the end of the year — Sens. Cornyn of Texas and Barrasso of Wyoming — had already given Trump their support. Thune was late to bend the knee, but bend it he did.
One more prominent Republican lining up behind the party’s inevitable presidential nominee is not shocking news. But the fact that Thune was so clearly reluctant to genuflect before Trump shows that someone like him — a rural-state Republican who’s very conservative, but not a MAGA bomb-thrower — is already an anachronism. In the kind of rural, overwhelmingly white state that Thune represents, Trumpism is the only game in town.
Rural whites are more likely to express racism, xenophobia and conspiracism than Americans who live elsewhere.
As Trump heads toward the nomination, rural voters are once again the foundation of his support. In the Michigan primary, for instance, Trump beat Nikki Haley handily in every part of the state, but his largest margin of victory came in rural areas. According to data assembled by The Daily Yonder, he outpolled Haley by 37.6 points in the metropolitan areas of the state. In rural areas, he beat her by 53.2 points.
In the general election, Trump will be buoyed by rural white voters just as he is in the primaries. In fact, if he wins the White House again while losing the popular vote — a distinct possibility — it will be because his rural supporters used their outsize political leverage to put him there.
The disproportionate power that rural voters wield, and their unusual devotion to Trump, are among the topics Tom Schaller and I explore in our new book, “White Rural Rage: The Threat to American Democracy.” Through the Electoral College, the…
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