George F. Will: Swing Time in Pennsylvania?
[George F. Will is a columnist for the WaPo.]
From the 1930s through the 1950s, Bucks County northeast of Philadelphia acquired a glamorous reputation as a retreat for Manhattan celebrities, including Oscar Hammerstein, who, according to local legend, was inspired by the view from his Doylestown front porch to write "Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin', " the opening song of "Oklahoma!" Today the county, which is 93 percent of Pennsylvania's 8th congressional District, figures in Republicans' plans to sing that song on the morning of Nov. 3....
[Republican candidate Mike] Fitzpatrick says that although he was his family's first Republican, his seven siblings have all seen the light. He and they grew up in the 8th District, in Levittown, one of the instant suburbs (the first, also called Levittown, is on Long Island) that were mass-produced after World War II by William Levitt. They were incubators of the postwar middle class, many of whose members' bought their first homes from Levitt for $7,990.
Bucks County is emblematic of not only 20th-century America but 18th-century America, too. It was from the Bucks County bank of the Delaware River that George Washington, on Christmas night, 1776, launched the boats that carried the attackers that surprised the Hessians in Trenton. Republicans hope that on Nov. 2 a piece of another, if rather less momentous, moment in America's political evolution will occur.
Read entire article at WaPo
From the 1930s through the 1950s, Bucks County northeast of Philadelphia acquired a glamorous reputation as a retreat for Manhattan celebrities, including Oscar Hammerstein, who, according to local legend, was inspired by the view from his Doylestown front porch to write "Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin', " the opening song of "Oklahoma!" Today the county, which is 93 percent of Pennsylvania's 8th congressional District, figures in Republicans' plans to sing that song on the morning of Nov. 3....
[Republican candidate Mike] Fitzpatrick says that although he was his family's first Republican, his seven siblings have all seen the light. He and they grew up in the 8th District, in Levittown, one of the instant suburbs (the first, also called Levittown, is on Long Island) that were mass-produced after World War II by William Levitt. They were incubators of the postwar middle class, many of whose members' bought their first homes from Levitt for $7,990.
Bucks County is emblematic of not only 20th-century America but 18th-century America, too. It was from the Bucks County bank of the Delaware River that George Washington, on Christmas night, 1776, launched the boats that carried the attackers that surprised the Hessians in Trenton. Republicans hope that on Nov. 2 a piece of another, if rather less momentous, moment in America's political evolution will occur.