Thread by @GraduatedBen

Posting a video of mountain people cutting up and having a good time isn’t the own you think it is. No Republican can get elected president without strong support from folks like this.

https://twitter.com/rpsagainsttrump/status/1665049005846323200

The story of the midterms has only been half absorbed. The end of Roe did boost Dem turnout, but what hurt the GOP the most was the drop in rural turnout. Across the country, rural turnout was 20-30 points lower than the GOP expected.

Expectations were built on the assumption that the rural base would turn out strongly and split 80/20-95/5 like they did for Trump. They thought this would happen because it happened for Youngkin in Virginia.

The narrative from national pundits (who don’t know Virginia politics) was that Youngkin’s win was powered by suburban voters, ignoring the fact that rural voters turned out like it was a presidential election and voted ~90/10 for Youngkin.

How did Youngkin pull that off? Well, rural voters wanted revenge on National Democrats for what they did to Trump and on Virginia Democrats for what they did to Virginia, and for what they were proposing (removal of confederate monuments, legal full-term abortion, gun bans,… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

Remember, when Northam tried to ban assault rifles, 70,000 armed citizens descended on Richmond. I remember the confederate flag patches worn by people at Youngkin rallies. Consultants on twitter tried to say they were plants. Nope. It was a real issue, still is.

McAuliffe also proposed vaccine passports and mandates. Youngkin wasn’t strong on the issue in general, but he was against forcing people to choose between their job and the jab. Youngkin was the only hammer people had to whack the Dems with. It was a unique election.

Republicans in the midterms thought that was just going to happen again and they didn’t actually have to offer the rural base anything. Took them for granted. Didn’t speak to the issues they cared about. Made zero effort to stop the base renamings or any other cultural… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

Trump‘s defense of Robert E. Lee and other southern heroes is smart politics. In contrast, DeSantis bent the knee to the woke mob on this issue. It will haunt him in this primary, particularly on Super Tuesday in the States of AL, CA, AR, NC, TN, TX, VA, and OK.