The modern Republican Party uses the divide-and-conquer principle as its overarching guide when it comes to electoral politics. The Southern Strategy, where working-class whites are tricked by Republicans into voting against their own best interests in order to hurt nonwhites, is the best-known and best-documented method. But another method, one that has the advantage of being less blatantly racist and thus harder to be attacked on that count, is what Bluestem Prairie blogger Sally Jo Sorensen calls "placebaiting", in which Republicans seek to get rural (and generally white) voters to oppose things or candidates seen as benefitting urban residents.

Playing the place card is a specialty of freshman Minnesota House Speaker Kurt Daudt. In fact, it may well be the only thing he knows how to do. Here he is, courtesy of BSP's Sorensen, trying to foment rural unrest over a proposed commuter rail line - one which would be built in large part with Federal and not State funds:

Speaker Daudt continues his campaign of placebaiting across Greater Minnesota, chumming the rhetorical waters with language that divides the metro from the rest of us.

At the Brainerd Dispatch, Zach Kayser reports in Minnesota speaker Daudt visits Brainerd: Says public can still view floor sessions of Legislature in 2016:

Daudt appeared optimistic the Legislature could finally get a transportation bill through, although he said there were still sticking points left.

One transportation issue that remained "unanswered" was mass transit in the metro, Daudt said.

"Some of the members in Minneapolis and St. Paul really want to see some new revenue go into the light rail, different modes of transportation in the metro area," he said. "To try to sneak money through for trains in the metro area, we don't think that's a very effective way to spend our dollars."

Speaker Daudt appears to hold his own private definition of the word "sneak," since neither the governor nor Senate transportation chair Scott Dibble have been secretive about how they want to fund light rail in the metro.

As Sorensen goes on to note, Daudt is the real sneak here, as he is known for bringing bills to the floor without allowing Democratic legislators to view them first.

UPDATE:  I hit “enter” too soon to state that the truly insidious thing about playing the Place Card is that it’s yet another way to make a racist appeal without being caught at it.  “Urban” is all too often used as a code word for “not white”, so this is yet another bigotry-laden tool in the GOP’s divide-and-conquer toolbox.