How does every county in your state go Red (Romney) in the last Presidential election, and then your whole state legislature is Democratically controlled, and traditionally has been?

Is this just a coal issue and people were pissed off at Obama, or something else I'm missing?

I'm not from West Virginia but I am going to assume yes, coal.

Everything I have heard is that KY, WV Democrats are pretty much pro-gun but blue on everything else.

The presidential race map is certainly interesting when you compare it to the senate race map.

Are they DINOs?

This. Democrats who like their guns.

 

Yep.

Presidential map

Senate map

I do not live in WV any longer but I am originally from there.
It is mostly a coal issue with WV. Yes they love their guns but
they love their Fudd guns and do not feel strongly about the AR,
AK issues but are strong 2A supporters when it comes to CCW
and hunting.

Ah.

Why did you leave?  From my brief time in the state, I was amazed at the beauty of it.  I could be happy living there it seemed with the price of land being so cheap.

Real simple, WV people are mostly conservatives yet they fall in line with Dems do to working man syndrome. Ie dems are thought to look out for the working man.
Dem party was conceived on this principle, it is only in recent times that the libs have taken over that party and the reality shift hasn't been understood. (Blue dog dem vs Lib dem)
Plus Repubs are just plain evil and only work for big business.
This is a thought process that's been handed down through generations.
Liberals will loose here just like repubs, but dems aren't necessarily viewed as libs

The part in red is consistent Democratic Party propaganda. Besides Andrew Jackson, the Democrats have traditionally actually been the party of the power elites. It was the 'status quo' party in the North (antebellum) and the slavery party in the South.



In the South it appealed to poor whites by giving them a common scapegoat and someone to lord over (slaves) even though most Southerners didn't own slaves - as in "At least I ain't a ________."



The 'free soil, free states, free men' Republicans were started as the party for the little guy - the homesteader in the west, the factory worker, etc.



After the Civil War, the southern power elites were terrified that poor whites would join freedmen in creating a new society that they didn't own. So the KKK was created to drive a wedge between the two and post-Reconstruction politics hammered on race to drive them a part.



In the North, wealthy power elites used Democratic political machines to control the poor. Tammany Hall, et al was / are about power for some and fuck the rest (as in Shitcago today). The post-radical era labor organizations (unions) were infiltrated and captured by the same Democratic Party bosses. Labor union leaders became Democratic nobility and provided both votes and money to the machines.



FDR used plain and naked corruption to turn states into Democratic fiefdoms by making the Democratic Party machines the gatekeepers for both job programs and assistance. Want a WPA project in your town? You better be a Democratic town. Want a PWA job? Better vote Democratic.



This tied into the unions, of course, through the National Recovery Act. Business that joined the wage and price stabilization program "voluntarily" received protection from regulators while their union shops got Federally set wages.



The Democratic Party has always been the party of the power elites, the political machine, the corrupt bosses and the criminal union leader.



But they've always convinced the sucker voter that they were "for the little guy" as they ass-fucked him to death. Being "libs" (Progressives Communists) is just another way to keep the serfs on the plantation.

Romney was the better democrat of the 2.