Rural Areas Vote Better

If it isn't too late to comment on the Michigan Primary, and we don't see that it is, it appears to us that one fact jumps out which may be more important than any other. It is in how, by and large, Rick Santorum won the rural areas while Mitt Romney tended to carry the urban ones. The results are not hard and fast as there certainly was a mix. Santorum carried the new 13th District which meanders in and around Detroit, while Romney won several counties in the northern lower peninsula. Still, the pattern was there.

A similar pattern can found in the 2008 Presidential election. Looking at a map of which counties Barack Obama and John McCain won respectively shows that rural support for McCain was overwhelming while the President's votes tended to come from urban areas. What this obviously tells us is that rural voters tend to be more conservative while city folk are more liberal.

But that in itself speaks volumes. It tells us that country folk are more independent and less concerned with government. Indeed, that on the whole they don't want government in their lives. They feel they can do just fine without it.

In short, our rural neighbors whether right here in Michigan or elsewhere on the fruited plain are the ones closer to the ideal of American government than the urban dwellers who in so many more ways live and die by government. Unfortunately, they're in the minority, and that's sad. It means the cities are intent to take the country folk with them down the kitchen drain. Majority rules, after all.

All that means is that a scant majority can make everyone else do what they want. It hardly seems fair. Especially when our great nation as a whole is on the slippery slope to dictatorship. It began when Washington gained its power through ballot box as it has. We'll have no one to blame but ourselves when we take the good down with the bad.