'Nobody's more insulting' to rural voters than Republicans: political scientist

Entire libraries worth of ink have been poured in an effort to understand, mythologize, and explain the behavior of white rural voters — why they are so attached to former President Donald Trump, and perhaps the ways that voters and politicians in more cosmopolitan areas don't understand the suffering and anxiety in these places.

But that may be missing the point, Amanda Marcotte wrote for Salon — perhaps instead, as former Washington Post columnist Paul Waldman and University of Maryland political science professor Thomas Schaller posit in their new book, "White Rural Rage: The Threat to Democracy," it's Republicans who have been infantilizing and condescending to these voters more than anyone else.

"Nobody is more insulting to rural voters than the people who are giving them nothing and taking their votes," Schaller told Marcotte in a new interview. "They claim Democrats are insulting, but Democrats are doing something for them and getting none of their votes. But nothing's more condescending than getting votes and doing nothing in return. J.D. Vance, Elise Stefanik and Tom Cotton: All these people were educated at Harvard and Yale. They frankly laugh behind the backs of their own voters to some degree, right? Those are the people who are really insulting. There's an old D.C. adage about stabbing people in the front. Republicans look you right in the eye and stab you right in the front."

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One of the clearest recent examples of this, he noted, is Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), who faces a re-election fight this year.

"They want to get mad at us at this book and dismiss us as a couple of liberal professors who live in the DC area and went to fancy schools. That's fine. We can deal with it. But when Ted Cruz says, my pronouns are 'kiss my ass' or 'you can't limit me to two beers,' now he's more insulting," Schaller argued. "What he is saying is, these voters are so easily won over by performative politics. I can reduce their core urges and reflexes to this. And I don't have to deliver a thing for rural Texas. I don't have to go to these counties. I don't have to live their experiences. I don't. I can go to Cancun on vacation and they'll still vote for me as long as I'll put on a flannel shirt and say, 'my pronouns are 'kiss my ass' and that's good enough to get me reelected."

The upshot of this, they said, is that rural white voters "need to start demanding more. There's many politically barren places where the Democrats don't go because they're never going to win and Republicans barely go because they know that they're always going to win. That population is not demanding anything of Republicans."