Election 2004: Urban vs. Rural

It struck me that when I saw a county-by-county nationwide map of Tuesday's Presidential election results on CNN (which, unfortunately, I can't find now), that almost every Democratic-majority county was either home to a major city, a neighbor of a major city, or home to a college town. If it were any more obvious it would jump out and bite you. The national divide really isn't so much between the coasts and everyplace else, it is clearly urban vs. rural. And what makes a blue state blue is very much how much its urban population exceeds its rural population.
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What this says to me is that the Republican Party has seized on the small-town mentality of rural America (and I don't mean this as an insult, it is simply a fact that people in small towns think differently from those in urban centers) to get where it wants to go. The threat to GLBT people is inherent in the demographic to which the GOP panders, rather than a conscious decision on their part.