[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 25 (Monday, February 13, 2017)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1127-S1128]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
PERSPECTIVE OF RURAL AMERICA TOWARD THE ROLE OF GOVERNMENT
Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, there is a very good radio reporter in
smalltown Iowa named Robert Leonard, or ``Dr. Bob,'' as he is known,
who interviews me every month. I recently read an opinion piece he
wrote in the New York Times where he gives his take on the perspective
of rural America toward the role of government. This perspective is
often lost in policy debates in our Nation's Capital. In this piece,
Dr. Bob gives very thorough and intellectually honest commentary that
more people should read.
I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the New York
Times article entitled, ``Why Rural America Voted for Trump'' by Robert
Leonard dated January 5, 2017.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
[From the New York Times, Jan. 5, 2017]
Why Rural America Voted for Trump
(By Robert Leonard)
Knoxville, IA.--One recent morning, I sat near two young
men at a coffee shop here whom I've known since they were
little boys. Now about 18, they pushed away from the table,
and one said: ``Let's go to work. Let the liberals sleep
in.'' The other nodded.
They're hard workers. As a kid, one washed dishes, took
orders and swept the floor at a restaurant. Every summer, the
other picked sweet corn by hand at dawn for a farm stand and
for grocery stores, and then went to work all day on his
parents' farm. Now one is a welder, and the other is in his
first year at a state university on an academic scholarship.
They are conservative, believe in hard work, family, the
military and cops, and they know that abortion and socialism
are evil, that Jesus Christ is our savior, and that Donald J.
Trump will be good for America.
They are part of a growing movement in rural America that
immerses many young people in a culture--not just
conservative news outlets but also home and church
environments--that emphasizes contemporary conservative
values. It views liberals as loathsome, misinformed and weak,
even dangerous.
Who are these rural, red-county people who brought Mr.
Trump into power? I'm a native Iowan and reporter in rural
Marion County, Iowa. I consider myself fairly liberal. My
family has mostly voted Democratic since long before I was
born. To be honest, for years, even I have struggled to
understand how these conservative friends and neighbors I
respect--and at times admire--can think so differently from
me, not to mention how over 60 percent of voters in my county
could have chosen Mr. Trump.
Political analysts have talked about how ignorance, racism,
sexism, nationalism, Islamophobia, economic
disenfranchisement and the decline of the middle class
contributed to the popularity of Mr. Trump in rural America.
But this misses the deeper cultural factors that shape the
thinking of the conservatives who live here.
For me, it took a 2015 pre-caucus stop in Pella by J. C.
Watts, a Baptist minister raised in the small town of
Eufaula, Okla., who was a Republican congressman from 1995 to
2003, to begin to understand my neighbors--and most likely
other rural Americans as well.
``The difference between Republicans and Democrats is that
Republicans believe people are fundamentally bad, while
Democrats see people as fundamentally good,'' said Mr. Watts,
who was in the area to campaign for Senator Rand Paul. ``We
are born bad,'' he said and added that children did not need
to be taught to behave badly--they are born knowing how to do
that.
``We teach them how to be good,'' he said. ``We become good
by being reborn--born again.''
He continued. ``Democrats believe that we are born good,
that we create God, not that he created us. If we are our own
God, as the Democrats say, then we need to look at something
else to blame when things go wrong--not us.''
Mr. Watts talked about the 2015 movie theater shooting in
Lafayette, La., in which two people were killed. Mr. Watts
said that Republicans knew that the gunman was a bad man,
doing a bad thing. Democrats, he added, ``would look for
other causes--that the man was basically good, but that it
was the guns, society or some other place where the blame
lies and then they will want to control the guns, or
something else--not the man.'' Republicans, he said, don't
need to look anywhere else for the blame.
Hearing Mr. Watts was an epiphany for me. For the first
time I had a glimpse of where many of my conservative friends
and neighbors were coming from. I thought, no wonder
Republicans and Democrats can't agree on things like gun
control, regulations or the value of social programs. We live
in different philosophical worlds, with different
foundational principles.
Overlay this philosophical perspective on the American
rural-urban divides of history, economy and geography, and
the conservative individual responsibility narrative becomes
even more powerful. In my experience, the urban-rural divide
isn't really so much a red state versus blue state issue,
it's red county versus blue county. Rural Iowans have more in
common with the rural residents of Washington State and New
Mexico--places I've also lived--than with the residents of
Des Moines, Seattle and Albuquerque.
Look at a national map of which counties went for Democrats
and which for Republicans: Overwhelmingly the blue counties
are along waterways, where early river transportation
encouraged the formation of cities, and surround state
capitals. This is also where most investment in
infrastructure and services is made. Rural Americans
recognize that this is how it must be, as the cities are
where most of the people are, yet it's a sore spot.
In state capitols across America, lawmakers spend billions
of dollars to take a few seconds off a city dweller's commute
to his office, while rural counties' farm-to-market roads
fall into disrepair. Some of the paved roads in my region are
no longer maintained and are reverting to gravel. For a
couple of generations now, services that were once scattered
across rural areas have increasingly been consolidated in
urban areas, and rural towns die. It's all done in the name
of efficiency.
In cities, firefighters and E.M.T.s are professionals whose
departments are funded by local, state and federal tax
dollars. Rural America relies on volunteers. If I have a
serious heart attack at home, I'll be cold to the touch by
the time the volunteer ambulance crew from a town 22 miles
away gets here.
Urban police officers have the latest in computer equipment
and vehicles, while small-town cops go begging.
In this view, blue counties are where most of our tax
dollars are spent, and that's where all of our laws are
written and passed. To rural Americans, sometimes it seems
our taxes mostly go to making city residents live better. We
recognize that the truth is more complex, particularly when
it comes to social programs, but it's the perception that
matters--certainly to the way most people vote.
To make matters worse, jobs are continuing to move to
metropolitan areas.
[[Page S1128]]
Small-town chamber of commerce directors and mayors still
have big dreams, and use their perkiest grins and tax
abatements to try to lure new businesses, only to see their
hopes dashed, time and again. Many towns with a rich history
and strong community pride are already dead; their citizens
just don't know it yet.
Many moderate rural Republicans became supporters of Mr.
Trump when he released his list of potential Supreme Court
nominees who would allow the possibility of overturning Roe
v. Wade. They also think the liberal worldview creates
unnecessary rules and regulations that cripple the economy
and take away good jobs that may belong to them or their
neighbor. Public school systems and colleges are liberal
tools of indoctrination that go after what we love and value
most--our children.
Some of what liberals worry about they see as pure
nonsense. When you are the son or daughter of a carpenter or
mechanic and a housewife or secretary who lives paycheck to
paycheck, who can't afford to send kids to college, as many
rural residents are, white privilege is meaningless and
abstract.
It's not just older people. The two young men at breakfast
exemplify a younger generation with this view. When Ted Cruz
campaigned in a neighboring town in 2015, I watched as a
couple of dozen grade-school pupils sat at his feet, as if
they were at a children's service at church. His campaign
speech was nearly a sermon, and the children listened wide-
eyed when he told them the world is a scary place, and it's
godly men like him who are going to save them from the evils
of President Obama, Hillary Clinton and their fellow
Democrats.
While many blame poor decisions by Mrs. Clinton for her
loss, in an environment like this, the Democratic candidate
probably didn't matter. And the Democratic Party may not for
generations to come. The Republican brand is strong in rural
America--perhaps even strong enough to withstand a disastrous
Trump presidency.
Rural conservatives feel that their world is under siege,
and that Democrats are an enemy to be feared and loathed.
Given the philosophical premises Mr. Watts presented as the
difference between Democrats and Republicans, reconciliation
seems a long way off.
____________________