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.