So maybe Sarah Palin’s coming to Lancaster because Lancaster is “pro-America“:

Palin also made a point of mentioning that she loved to visit the “pro-America” areas of the country, of which North Carolina is one. No word on which states she views as unpatriotic.

This was a paraphrase, though as Steve Benen notes, the McCain/Palin campaign later tried to clarify:

“We believe that the best of America is not all in Washington, D.C. We believe” — here the audience interrupted Palin with applause and cheers — “We believe that the best of America is in these small towns that we get to visit, and in these wonderful little pockets of what I call the real America, being here with all of you hard working very patriotic, um, very, um, pro-America areas of this great nation.”

Notes Benen:

I don’t think the context helps.

Palin seems to believe there are “pro-America areas of this great nation,” but if you live in a city — including the nation’s capital — you’re not in one of those areas.

Actually, what Palin is saying is almost a verbatim reiteration of something that has been said time and again throughout American history.

It is an absolute staple of our history that people who live in small towns resent those who live in the big, diverse, elite immoral city. I mean, this has been going on since at least the 1820s, when Massachusetts mill towns began springing up and drawing young farm girls with the lure of better wages - and a chance to escape the depressing drudgery of the family farm. They could be around more people their own age! Their prospects for marriage improved! Wasn’t it exciting, with so much more going on!

Small-town America has resented the big town ever since.

This resentment was an explicit theme of the populist era - the tyranny imposed upon the good, virtuous, rural folk by the slick dudes in the big city.

In this view of the country, rural Americans are the best Americans - industrious and loyal, rock-solid in their faith in God and their lack of pretense. It’s part myth, of course, but a comforting one. And as Benen notes, it hinges on the notion - imagined as often as not - of urban “snobbery” and ultimate oppression of good rural Americans.

So what Palin’s peddling is nothing new. It’s small-town, populist rage - updated with rectangular glasses.