106. Ross Benes Assesses the Strength of the Nebraska Republican Party in 2022 in the Wake of Infighting, Indictments, and Scandals

Ross Benes wrote the 2021 book Rural Rebellion: How Nebraska
Became a Republican Stronghold in which he diagnoses “a gradual
shift in the types of candidates we elect to our state
legislature and the US Congress." He argues that "[t]he
accumulative changes over the past few decades have made it
extremely difficult for Democrats to be competitive outside of
certain parts of our two biggest cities, Omaha and Lincoln, and
even there, it is often an uphill battle for liberals.” He came
on the show last year to discuss the cultural landscape of highly
loyal GOP voters and today he’s back to talk with Tom Knoblauch
about just how strong that Republican stronghold is in what
appears to be a 2022 rocked with scandals, resignations,
in-fighting, dark money, and the specter of Donald Trump.