I hail from farm country. Wolf Bros. farms sat about midway between two sleepy little Pennsylvania towns: Dillsburg and York Springs. In fact, situated astraddle County Line Road as it was, if I had been brought up in the barn (something my mother occasionally accused me of), I’d have gone to school in Dillsburg. But with the house on the opposite side of the road, I went to school in York Springs.
I say all this by way of preamble, not because most people reading this blog give a tinker’s damn about my natal land, but for another reason entirely. Because today I was flabbergasted to read this story in the New Yorker. It’s about a GOP political operative named Sarah Longwell who hails from – you guessed it – Dillsburg, PA. What stunned me about all this was that Ms. Longwell ain’t yer grand-daddy’s brand of Republican operative. She was once board chair of the “Log Cabin Republicans.” And if you need to look up what that term means, I suggest you google it, pronto. I like that she’s described as “always <with> a knife in her teeth.” Also this….
Longwell grew up just outside Dillsburg, a small town of fewer than three thousand people. Her parents still live there. Dillsburg is conservative and Republican, the kind of place where the local elementary school closes for the first day of deer-hunting season.
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In any case, since most of you rarely click my links, you’ll remain blissfully unaware of who Sarah Longwell really is, or what’s really going on in Dillsburg these days. And thassok by me. “Just don’t be surprised come November” is all I’ve got to say about that. You been warned.
