Rural Barack

A reader writes:

In regards to your post that Obama’s support in rural NH is surprising; let me give you a little anecdotal evidence of his surprising support in rural central Pennsylvania:

I teach civics and government at a small rural public high school in central Pennsylvania ... not exactly a hotbed of liberalism. In fact, in the mock election that I ran for the school in 2004 the students re-elected George Bush with nearly 70% of the vote. Of course now Bush couldn’t buy a compliment from the vast majority of my students, but more surprising to me than that is how they’ve turned to Obama in droves. 

We just finished a project in which we looked at six of the top Republicans and six of the top Democratic candidates and the students in my overwhelmingly white, rural, middle to lower middle class town are excited about Barack Obama.  I’ve been teaching at this school for 10 years and thought I had a pretty good understanding of the political pulse of my students and I never, never would have predicted his appeal.  It’s astounding.

But not surprising to me was who is running a distant second ... Ron Paul.