[krapp]

>but, overall the political power of Appalachia does not at all seem sufficient to warrant extra attention

They also serve (willingly or not) as exemplars held up by Republicans, particularly in the populist ideology of Trump supporters, of those "real Americans" who have been betrayed by globalism and progressivism, and to further the narrative of an intractable cultural and political divide having formed between the rural right and urban left (and to contrast the cultural and ethnic purity of the former against the corrupting influence of multiculturalism and secularism among the latter.)