Tennessee for Miles and Miles and Miles…

Columnist Ron Hart gets his Tennessee dander (?) up over Barack Obama's Illinois dander getting up over an ad attacking his wife (Obama's; not Hart's; yes, very confusing, apology offered in advance):

I love my native Tennessee.

We did not vote for Al Gore when he ran for president, sealing his loss. A local libertarian group broke the story of his home in Nashville using 10 times the average energy bill. Citizens also stormed the legislature when it tried to implement an income tax. You have to appreciate that.

And now, Tennessee Republicans have fired the first salvo that will define the campaign for the presidency. Their ad, raising the issue of Barack's wife's comment on the campaign trail made in 2008 that "For the first time in my adult life, I am really proud of my country, " together with Obama's condescending remark that the people of small town America "cling to guns, or religion or antipathy to people who are not like them or anti-immigration…" are all fair questions….

Hart concludes:

We Southerners do not appreciate being talked down to by a Northern, never-had-a-real-job politician who wants to please everyone. To paraphrase a Southern saying: don't appease on our shoes and tell us it is raining.

They call Tennessee the Volunteer State, because people do not have to live there; they choose too—small towns and all.

Hart predicts that small-town-dwellers all over this land will reject Obama. Whole thing there.

Note: From 2000 to 2006, Tennessee's population growth was slower than the U.S. average, so folks are volunteering, but not at a breakneck pace.

I think Obama's small-town remarks were pretty awful, and the whole thing about his uncle at Auschwitz strikes me as the sort of thing a conservative Republican would really get beaten up over.

But what do you think, gentle Hit & Run readers, is Mrs. Obama fair game? Will Obama pay a price for his alleged elitism? Do people really choose to live in small towns?