'Inside Every Rural Republican is a Rural Democrat Begging to Get Out'

What are the odds of an American news outlet showing a Democrat with a Confederate flag bedspread?

Pretty much zero.

But here's a look at a disgruntled rural Democrat who has some serious issues with Brack Obama.

The sea of shining, hope-filled faces that routinely flood Barack Obama's rallies would be an alien environment for the grizzled features and tobacco-stained temperament of Dave “Mudcat” Saunders.

His preferred habitat is up a tree gunning down deer or on the mud flats — which lent him their name — catching catfish, part of an endless struggle with Appalachian wildlife.

Along with his Confederate flag bedspread, the stag heads on his walls, his preference for profanity over punctuation, he would horrify what he calls the “northeastern elitist, Metropolitan Opera wing of the Democrats”.

But, as one of the party's few (some say only) rural strategists, this might just be part of Mr Obama's problem.

“The Democrats talk of tolerance, but in reality the only tolerance they ever exhibit is for their own intellectual arrogance — and they don't have tolerance for my culture,” says Mudcat. “They think we're a bunch of hillbilly heathens who go out and burn crosses and do crazy bullshit.

“They don't give a f*** if we're with them or not, because it doesn't matter. The f***ing Republicans have stolen the individual liberties thing and that's why the gun thing is such a big deal.”

Saunders, by the way, worked for the Great Inseminator, John Edwards, before Silky dropped out of the race. Sounds like Edwards had some real winners on his campaign.

Mudcat has previously helped both Mark Warner, the former Governor, and Senator Jim Webb win in traditionally Republican-leaning Virginia. He was also a senior strategist on the failed presidential campaign of John Edwards, a close friend.

Hmm. A close friend of John Edwards sporting the Confederate flag? How come we never saw this on MSNBC?

Has he been asked to help Mr Obama? “I got a call from them right after Johnny got out. I never heard back.” What does he think of the Illinois senator's campaign? Mudcat pauses and lights another Camel.

“Sometimes they remind me of another bunch from Chicago, the Blues Brothers: they seem to think they're on a mission from God.”

He is scathing about the reliance on registering new voters. “If that's how he runs his campaign, he is going to lose. I'd rather bet on those who voted before. When he stands up and says that I'm gonna get 30 per cent more black voters — I'm gonna get 30 per cent more of my people to turn out for me — what is Joe Six-Pack thinking?”

Mudcat suggests that John McCain could win Michigan while holding Ohio and Florida. And, unless Mr Obama changes course, “he ain't gonna win Virgina either”.

“Instead of all the high-falutin' exhortation about listening to the better angels, Mr Obama has gotta come out here — and time is short — and emphasise social justice.

“He should say, 'I'm a black guy. I'm not gonna take the Michael Jackson treatment, but the problems of South Side Chicago are the same problems of the Appalachian mountains'. Big sonsofabitches are kicking the little sonsofabitches in the ass. Now I'm one of the little sonsofabitches, so I'm pissed off. Inside every rural Republican is a rural Democrat begging to get out. But we always trip over our johnsons.”

“The campaign,” he says scornfully, “think this election will be won on the internet. But here, at 5.30 in the afternoon, they don't go on the goddamn internet, they go watch The Andy Griffith Show [a 1960s sitcom].”