Mostly it's just that we've focused on the places where the pattern makes sense. For instance, Trinity County, which I mentioned before, is pretty rural, but was populated initially mostly by ex-gold-rush folks; you'd expect to find the independent-farmer mindset there (maybe even boosted beyond normal levels), and sure enough, it does seem a lot more progressive than Kern County.

But if you look at Kentucky, you find that its Representatives aren't all little clones of Mitch McConnell. I mentioned Comer before, who seems far more aligned with the McCarthy playbook. And then if you look at rural Colorado, which outwardly to me at least seems to lean way more on the independent-farmer side than the plantation-owner side, you find that Lauren Boebert is from there, representing the substantially rural 3rd district. As far as I can tell, she is as big a step from McCarthy as McCarthy is from McConnell. Or consider Harriet Hageman's resounding defeat of Liz Cheney. Cheney was far more the McConnell type than Hageman is--and again, lots of rural voters in Wyoming (and anyway, the change in style was dramatic). And both do a pretty good job of espousing rhetoric consistent with the ideals that Pluralus characterized as the culture of rural America.

So to me it looks like the model that the agricultural model influences the culture is a good one, but it seems to me as if there's a lot of other stuff going on too. Including a substantial adherence to something not terribly far off from what Pluralus said.