{"id":577,"date":"2008-05-02T09:50:25","date_gmt":"2008-05-02T09:50:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/godometer\/2008\/05\/obama-small-towners-as-source.html"},"modified":"2008-05-02T09:50:25","modified_gmt":"2008-05-02T09:50:25","slug":"obama-small-towners-as-source","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2008\/05\/obama-small-towners-as-source.html","title":{"rendered":"Obama: Small Towners as Source of Values"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"obama4.jpg\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/godometer\/obama4.jpg\" width=\"107\" \/><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"barn.jpg\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/211\/import\/barn.jpg\" width=\"127\" \/>Barack Obama&#8217;s unscripted comments about small town Americans clinging to God, guns, and anti-immigrant sentiment didn&#8217;t do him any favors in Pennsylvania&#8217;s primary, so he&#8217;s heaping praise on small town values in advance of Indiana&#8217;s Tuesday primary.<br \/>\nHere&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.etruth.com\/Know\/News\/Story.aspx?ID=448208\">The Truth newspaper<\/a> said about Obama&#8217;s appearance yesterday in a South Bend barn:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;It is my belief that rural America represents what&#8217;s best about America &#8212; hard work, responsibility, individual initiative, a sense of community, a sense of family,&#8221; Obama told an invitation-only group of 60 people sitting on picnic benches near bails of straw and an old tractor at the St. Joseph County 4-H Fairgrounds.<br \/>\n&#8220;And the fact that rural America is having such a difficult time indicates that we&#8217;ve lost focus on our values,&#8221; the Illinois senator and front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination said.<br \/>\n&#8230;.During his hourlong appearance, Obama, with white shirt sleeves rolled back to his elbows, reminded the gathering of his family&#8217;s roots in small-town Kansas.<br \/>\n&#8220;What I&#8217;m really saying is that I want this Heartland to maintain itself as a source of strength and a source of values,&#8221; he said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Hillary Clinton&#8217;s been dishing out this kind of values-laden rhetoric for months now, while Obama&#8217;s values messaging has focused more on his own faith commitment in a more testimonial way. Is he shifting the values talk off himself and onto voters?<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><br \/>\n5<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Barack Obama&#8217;s unscripted comments about small town Americans clinging to God, guns, and anti-immigrant sentiment didn&#8217;t do him any favors in Pennsylvania&#8217;s primary, so he&#8217;s heaping praise on small town values in advance of Indiana&#8217;s Tuesday primary. Here&#8217;s The Truth newspaper said about Obama&#8217;s appearance yesterday in a South Bend barn: &#8220;It is my belief&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":50,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-577","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-barack-obama"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Obama: Small Towners as Source of Values - God-O-Meter<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2008\/05\/obama-small-towners-as-source.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Obama: Small Towners as Source of Values - God-O-Meter\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Barack Obama&#8217;s unscripted comments about small town Americans clinging to God, guns, and anti-immigrant sentiment didn&#8217;t do him any favors in Pennsylvania&#8217;s primary, so he&#8217;s heaping praise on small town values in advance of Indiana&#8217;s Tuesday primary. Here&#8217;s The Truth newspaper said about Obama&#8217;s appearance yesterday in a South Bend barn: &#8220;It is my belief&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2008\/05\/obama-small-towners-as-source.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"God-O-Meter\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-05-02T09:50:25+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/godometer\/obama4.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"dgilgoff\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Obama: Small Towners as Source of Values - God-O-Meter","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2008\/05\/obama-small-towners-as-source.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Obama: Small Towners as Source of Values - God-O-Meter","og_description":"Barack Obama&#8217;s unscripted comments about small town Americans clinging to God, guns, and anti-immigrant sentiment didn&#8217;t do him any favors in Pennsylvania&#8217;s primary, so he&#8217;s heaping praise on small town values in advance of Indiana&#8217;s Tuesday primary. Here&#8217;s The Truth newspaper said about Obama&#8217;s appearance yesterday in a South Bend barn: &#8220;It is my belief&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2008\/05\/obama-small-towners-as-source.html","og_site_name":"God-O-Meter","article_published_time":"2008-05-02T09:50:25+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/godometer\/obama4.jpg"}],"author":"dgilgoff","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2008\/05\/obama-small-towners-as-source.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2008\/05\/obama-small-towners-as-source.html","name":"Obama: Small Towners as Source of Values - God-O-Meter","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2008\/05\/obama-small-towners-as-source.html#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2008\/05\/obama-small-towners-as-source.html#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/godometer\/obama4.jpg","datePublished":"2008-05-02T09:50:25+00:00","dateModified":"2008-05-02T09:50:25+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/#\/schema\/person\/b7e97412c87d7a3b866e9972cc090db4"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2008\/05\/obama-small-towners-as-source.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2008\/05\/obama-small-towners-as-source.html"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2008\/05\/obama-small-towners-as-source.html#primaryimage","url":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/godometer\/obama4.jpg","contentUrl":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/godometer\/obama4.jpg"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2008\/05\/obama-small-towners-as-source.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Obama: Small Towners as Source of Values"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/","name":"God-O-Meter","description":"A scientific measure of God-talk in the elections","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/#\/schema\/person\/b7e97412c87d7a3b866e9972cc090db4","name":"dgilgoff","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/858\/858da2927809a8352512cd24712c020cx96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/858\/858da2927809a8352512cd24712c020cx96.jpg","caption":"dgilgoff"},"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/author\/dgilgoff"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/577","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/50"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=577"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/577\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}