{"id":30067,"date":"2012-09-04T12:00:39","date_gmt":"2012-09-04T17:00:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=30067"},"modified":"2012-09-02T08:31:28","modified_gmt":"2012-09-02T13:31:28","slug":"the-heartland-strategy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=30067","title":{"rendered":"The Heartland Strategy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Romney\/Ryan, running <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nypost.com\/p\/news\/opinion\/opedcolumnists\/it_battle_for_america_heartland_5CFRdzY7pjIONEmBoLO1NM#ixzz25ECKTIx0\">to peel the &#8220;Midwest&#8221; away from the Democrats<\/a>?<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>A rout of the Democrats along the Great Lakes would be huge not only electorally, but also culturally.<\/p>\n<p>It would marginalize the party as a group of arugula-munching, latte-sipping elites who enjoy their ocean views and heedlessly live off the fat of the land (many on the taxpayers\u2019 dime) as lawyers, journalists, college professors, government employees and entitlement recipients \u2014 while the rest of the interior labors to pay the bill and suffers the \u201cregulation\u201d of distant, unaccountable bureaucrats.<\/p>\n<p>In other words, the Heartland Campaign is not simply about Electoral College votes. It\u2019s also a way to frame the Democrats as the out-of-touch party of the status quo \u2014 i.e., Big Government \u2014 at a time when Big Government has so signally failed the average American.<\/p>\n<p>If it works \u2014 and if a Romney administration can successfully grapple with the debt bomb, the entitlement crisis and growing government dependency \u2014 it could set back the Democrats\u2019 prospects for years to come.<\/p>\n<p>Which brings us back to Eastwood. In such films as \u201cThe Outlaw Josey Wales\u201d and \u201cHigh Plains Drifter,\u201d he\u2019s the embodiment of rugged, rebellious heartland values.<\/p>\n<p>And those cranky, cantankerous, all-American voters are just who Romney &amp; Ryan need to defeat the coastal elites and return America to its heartland roots.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>If it works, and R&amp;R crush in the heardland, leaving the left clinging to the coasts and their suppurating outposts in Chicago, the Twin Cities and Madison\/Milwaukee? \u00a0Expect to see a lot of mid-November prate and gabble from lefties about coastal secession.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Romney\/Ryan, running to peel the &#8220;Midwest&#8221; away from the Democrats? A rout of the Democrats along the Great Lakes would be huge not only electorally, but also culturally. It would marginalize the party as a group of arugula-munching, latte-sipping elites who enjoy their ocean views and heedlessly live off the fat of the land (many [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56,21,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30067","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-campaign-12","category-midwest","category-republicans"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30067","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30067"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30067\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30080,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30067\/revisions\/30080"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30067"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30067"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30067"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}