Clinging to Guns and Religion

I'm a bit behind the Obama-small-town-PA comment ("You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them...And they fell through the Clinton Administration, and the Bush Administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.")

For what it's worth, I'm not sure these people are bitter (at least my people). Perhaps conservative, perhaps averse to change, perhaps skeptical of big government and masses of people threatening (in their eyes) not to join but to overtake their community. But I just don't see bitter. Even the people who would rather you kill them than take their gun seem to be impassioned and emboldened by any threats, not hardened and bittered.