"Defending [your state] values"

Politics & Elections
1

Last week I got two cards in the mail from different GOP candidates that highlighted “MISSOURI VALUES” in red capital letters. Well, maybe they weren’t both red, and maybe one was mixed-case. I may dig them out of the paper-to-recycle later and check. But both a Congressman running for re-election and a–gubernatorial candidate, I think–were keen to tell me in a headline font that they were defending “Missouri values.”

I don’t rightly know what makes Missouri values all that different from Kentucky, Ohio, Kansas, Texas, or San Fernando Valley values, but I suspect that there’s some template for “[your state] VALUES” that they’re working from. If this is the campaign motif for GOP candidates this year, as I suspect, then some of you may have seen similar.

So am I right? Are you getting YouTube ads, direct mail, anything, telling you about how Candidate Fatpants is “defending [your state] values”? Full points if they’re “defending” them, but you should get close to full points if they just say, “[YOUR STATE] VALUES” in a headline with no sentence, just because that’s so stereotypically political.

ETA: I really want to know if you got this with non-state regions, too. Anything from “Valley Values” to “Western Vallues” would help me get a picture of what’s going on.

2

Remember when Cruz told Iowans - or was it Indianians? - that they didn’t need Trump to come in with his New York Values?

It’s just a variation on that.

Big town liberal elitist values = SCARY

Small town “real America” shitkicker values = Good and Apple Pie

3

I always thought Missouri values were “Show me.”

4

California State Values –

If everybody had a 12 gauge
With a sufboard too.
You see em shootin’ and surfin’
From here to Malibu.
Skeet Surfin’…
Skeet Surfin’…

5

New York values are:

capitalism
entrepreneurship
tolerance
freedom
liberty
patriotism

Never forget September 11, 2001.

6

Judging from all the election flyers I’ve been receiving, MISSOURI VALUES appear to consist of (1) no abortions, and (2) NRA. Since that’s basically the only facts these candidates seem interested in sharing about themselves.

This election can’t come soon enough.

7

If an American was to go so far as to actually travel across stale boundaries to live, roughly how long does it usually take for them to shed the now inappropriate values of the state they left and assume those of their new home state? And what happens in the interim to these values-displaced persons?

8

Raised in Texas, moved to Minnesota. Remember the night I thought about how the bar I was in…fairly full, maybe seventy people…there might not be a single person who was carrying a pistol. It was odd at first, but then strangely soothing.

9

Nobody here in either party seems to want to be associated with “Illinois values”. Can’t imagine why…four of our ladt eight Governors haven’t even been convicted of felonies!

10

The first time I drove through Missouri, judging from the billboards, I figured Missouri values = Adult Bookstores at every Interstate exit. :slight_smile: Seriously, though, I had never been to a state with so many billboards for Adult Bookstores. What’s up with that?

11

Not a lot else to do in Missouri?

12

Never driven from Chicago to Milwaukee, then?

I think it’s the same effect that caused all the male hookers in Cleveland to be in such high demand during the Republican Convention.

13

I don’t even know what South Dakota values are. Judging from our history, it probably revolves around killing Indians and carving people into mountains.

14

Southern Baptists traveling alone.

I live in Montana. I like Montana. But I don’t want to preserve Montana values, I want to improve them. I want the state to become better than it was, not to stagnate.

Besides, there are no “Montana values” any more than there are “Illinois values” and for much the same reason: There’s no single set of values shared between the extremely rural and conservative eastern portion and the more urban and progressive western portion, any more than Chicago and downstate Illinois share a single set of values. States are just too awkwardly-sized: They’re too big to be fully unified but too small to have much of an independent existence, despite what the Founding Fathers thought. Plus, especially out west, the borders are utterly arbitrary and create political units which don’t reflect any cultural units, then or now.

15

This species of electioneering doesn’t seem to exist in WA, or at least in Olympia. I can’t recall ever seeing a mailer or commercial about “Washington values”.

I assume it’s because this state is a Democratic stronghold, and Olympia in particular is a hotbed of liberalism, and so any attempt to patronize the electorate about “values” would be more likely to turn them off than to win them over.

To the extent that “Washington values” might exist, I’d define them as tolerance, respect, polite friendliness, and minding your own damn business. (The Seattle Freeze is a real thing.)

16

I dug these back out before tossing them. They were for the primary a week ago.
Billy Long (R-Beerbellies) has on one side of his letter-sized glossy postcard, “DEFENDING MISSOURI VALUES” in letters larger than anything but his name. The other side has the same font family in a smaller size, reading “PROVEN FISCAL CONSERVATIVE.”

To his credit, he has a list of what he sells as his values, whether or not they’re all “Missouri Values”:

First, six positive values each marked with a check mark and “YES”:
FAIR TAX (I assume this is the national retail tax proposal, but it may be meant to be misread as, “taxes that are fair.”)
RIGHT TO LIFE
NRA MEMBER
(It may very important that those two are right next to each other, so the gun enthusiasts don’t think you’re a bleeding heart, and the church ladies don’t think you’re a bloodthirsty terrorist?)
TAX REDUCTIONS (Not next to “FAIR TAX” because that would be silly.)
LESS GOVERNMENT
30-YR BUSINESS OWNER

Then three negative values marked with an X and “NO”:
MORE TAXES (Wait, he just said that!)
BAILOUTS
WASTEFUL EARMARKS

Oh, the other side has some bullet points:
[ul]
[li]**Protecting **Unborn Life[/li][li]**Voting **Against the Terrible Omnibus[/li][li]**Cutting **Taxes to Grow Our Economy[/li][li]**Fighting to Repeal Obamacare[/li][/ul]
I’m not sure, but maybe Congressman Long’s “Missouri Values” include rhyming words that end in “-ting” and capitalizing lists as if they were chapter titles. Also, he apparently has a personal beef with an omnibus bill.

The other postcard I got was from “conservative outsider John Brunner,” who would go on to lose the primary in his bid for Governor. He has some check marks too, next to a photo:

MAN OF FAITH WHO SHARES OUR MISSOURI VALUES
SUCCESSFUL BUSINESSMAN WHO CAN’T BE BOUGHT
U.S. MARINE
CONSTITUTIONAL CONSERVATIVE
ENDORSED BY GUN OWNERS OF AMERICA
"A" RATING FROM THE NRA (Increased size as shown.)
ENDORSED BY MISSOURI RIGHT TO LIFE

The other side is a great big picture of former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee at twice the scale of the photo of Brunner, and a quote of Huckabee endorsing John Brunner. Of course, this is Missouri, where we make jokes about Arkansans, so I’m not sure that helped.