Santorum And The South, Ctd

A reader writes:

I grew up in central PA — the "Alabama" part of the state, as Carville so aptly put it. Where I grew up was a very red part of a blue (or at least purple) state. My old congressional district is about 60-65% Republican, despite most people there being working class, and in an area where most of the jobs were connected to the railroad, coal mining, and manufacturing.

Culturally, it was very "Southern."

The most listened to radio station was Froggy 98, a country station. My next door neighbor's pickup truck had a confederate flag on it, and in fact I saw many confederate flags growing up. People were obsessed with NASCAR. Every year I had the Monday after Thanksgiving off from school for the first day of deer hunting season. Religiously, it was a hotbed of "independent, fundamentalist, Bible churches."

These people overwhelmingly voted for Santorum. They were his people. I've met Santorum a few times and he knew the name of my tiny high school (100 in my graduating class), indicating how important this part of the state was to him.