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Politics are my bread and butter; the one thing which always seems to excite me more than anything else. Some people have football games; I've got elections. I'm not sure why any of this is (except, of course, that I might be a total and other geek!), but it did mean that I was predestined to find this lecture on Plaines Politics to be fascinating.
I, personally, have often wondered how a region which once turned out the Populists and Williams Jennings Bryan (and he was the conservative one of the bunch!) could turn around and start producing ultra-conservatives a mere century later. Of course, the more you looked at it, the actual emotions behind the politics of the region had stayed the same, it was just the way in which they were expressed, which had changed; the great conspiracy of the "moneyed interests" became those "damned liberal elitists" (oddly enough, these were largely the same people; east coast elites!) Even the strong strain of religion hasn't disappeared in all of that time.
Dr. Isern's explanation of a sense of radicalism within the region seems to make the most sense. Plains residents seem to have an us-versus-them mentality when it comes to politics and are quick to feel as of the rest of the nation is, at best, ignoring them and, at worst, actively oppressing them. Add to this an appreciation for political 'characters' and you've got a situation for very colorful and dynamic politics within the Great Plains.