O'Malley Declared War on Rural Maryland

According to State Sen. E.J. Pipkin (R-Uppershore)

...The conversation centered on several pieces of state legislation that impact rural counties, including the Maryland Transportation Authority's plan to raise tolls statewide, the Maryland Department of Planning's PlanMaryland, and the federal Watershed Implementation Plan.

Pipkin said that as he looked over all of the issues brought up at the meeting, he could not help but see what he has deemed a "war on rural Maryland" by O'Malley's Democratic administration.

"(The septic ban) is about gutting local control over planning and zoning," he said. "It's all part of the administration's view (of reducing the carbon footprint) in the state and they feel the best way to do that is to reduce growth in the rural areas and drive people into the urban areas. All of that sounds very backroom, until you look at their proposals."

Jay Jacobs said he agreed with Pipkin's opinion and added that the septic ban "looked like preservation without paying for it."...

The great divide underlying all politics in the US is not liberal versus conservative, or democrat versus republican, it is urban versus rural, which drives those divisions.  Rural people have a fundamentally different relationships with a more distant government, which is not as available to help, than urban people who are much more heavily dependent on government for their day to day infrastructure.  It leads to a set of expectations over how much help you can expect from the government, and to what extent you will allow the government to control your actions in the name of the general welfare.