Barack Obama’s unscripted comments about small town Americans clinging to God, guns, and anti-immigrant sentiment didn’t do him any favors in Pennsylvania’s primary, so he’s heaping praise on small town values in advance of Indiana’s Tuesday primary.
Here’s The Truth newspaper said about Obama’s appearance yesterday in a South Bend barn:

“It is my belief that rural America represents what’s best about America — hard work, responsibility, individual initiative, a sense of community, a sense of family,” 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.
“And the fact that rural America is having such a difficult time indicates that we’ve lost focus on our values,” the Illinois senator and front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination said.
….During his hourlong appearance, Obama, with white shirt sleeves rolled back to his elbows, reminded the gathering of his family’s roots in small-town Kansas.
“What I’m really saying is that I want this Heartland to maintain itself as a source of strength and a source of values,” he said.

Hillary Clinton’s been dishing out this kind of values-laden rhetoric for months now, while Obama’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?

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