Majorities in Congress aren’t formed by the national zeitgeist, but by the mostly white & mostly conservative voters who live in America’s small towns

"Winning Small" by Brian Mann from The New York Times:

By almost every measure, voter discontent is deeper than it was in 1994, when Democrats lost nine seats in the Senate and 54 in the House.

Surely, the Republican Party is facing an electoral drubbing. And yet, President Bush and Karl Rove baldly assert that Republicans will retain control of Congress. The rationale?

Majorities in Congress aren’t formed by the national zeitgeist, as Mr. Rove cheerfully points out. They are built one race at a time. And in dozens of close contests this fall, the outcome will be determined largely by one often-overlooked minority group: the mostly white and mostly conservative voters who live in America’s small towns.

Residents of rural areas make up only a fifth of the country’s population. That’s a little less than African-Americans and Hispanics combined. But unlike voters in those minority groups, small-town whites are often kingmakers in national politics.

In 2004, they voted for George W. Bush by nearly a 20-point margin. Newspapers ran headlines that baffled their urban readers: “Rural Values Proved Pivotal,” “Conservatives in Rural Ohio Big Key in Bush Victory,” and “G.O.P. Won With Accent on Rural and Traditional.

If rural America embraces Republicans with the same fervor it did two years ago, Democrats will almost certainly be denied a majority in the Senate and may fall short in the House.

Naturally, the Republicans’ rural strategy only works if small towns vote Republican by wide margins. This year, that might not happen. A bipartisan poll conducted last week for the Center for Rural Strategies found that the loyalty of rural voters has been deeply shaken by Iraq and the Mark Foley page scandal.

Since September, rural voters moved from a four-point advantage for Republicans to a four-point advantage for Democrats in Senate races, the Rural Strategies report concluded, and from evenly divided to a 13-point advantage for the Democrats in House races.

Worse yet for Republicans, a growing number of Democrats have awakened to the fact that small towns matter.

If Democrats succeed in increasing their rural vote, they could decisively sweep Republicans from power. But as the Center for Rural Strategies has pointed out, most of these races will be decided by razor-thin margins. And the Republicans are working feverishly to mollify and re-energize their rural base with talk about same-sex marriage, abortion, gun rights, public Christianity, terrorism and immigration — all issues that play brilliantly in small towns. The Republican National Committee has cranked up its sophisticated get-out-the-vote machine, combining phone and mail prompts, pastor-and-pulpit networks, conservative talk radio and door-to-door canvassing.

On Election Day, millions of urban Democrats will go to the polls expecting victory and dramatic change in Washington. But beware: Mr. Rove’s sunny forecast isn’t just spin. He and his party are counting on small towns to send a very different message, and to give the Republicans two more years to get it right.