The Frog Jump take on a superstorm At first, I had trouble understanding the Republican opposition to federal aid for victims of superstorm Sandy. But things have been growing clearer since I began looking at the issue from a Frog Jump standpoint. In case you haven't heard of it, Frog Jump is a western Tennessee community so small it doesn't even appear on some maps. But it leapt into my consciousness a few days ago when I began to do some online research on the people who have been battling against Sandy relief. Efforts to pass a $60bn aid package failed in the last session of Congress, amid opposition from Republicans in the House of Representatives, requiring legislators to start all over again last week when a new session began. As a result, more than two months after Sandy hit, Congress has approved only a first instalment of $9.7bn in aid - with 67 House Republicans voting "no." To find out what kind of people these 67 Republicans were, I began checking their websites and came across Stephen Fincher, a proud son of Frog Jump, which is more than 1,000 miles from the Jersey shore. The representative of the eighth congressional district of Tennessee proved to be an interesting guy: a singer of gospel music, a farmer and a symbol of so many of the House members who opposed helping the people hurt by the ocean storm. That's because nearly all the House naysayers are Frog Jumpers of a sort - representatives of rural or suburban districts far from the sea. Most come from states with no ocean exposure. After examining district maps of the rest, I spotted only three among the 67 who represent areas with substantial shoreline. It's an intriguing statistic, because it points to one of the more underrated political divisions in the US today - between people on the coasts and those inland. Democrats dominate coastal areas of the contiguous 48 states. In the presidential election last November, Barack Obama won all three states bordering the Pacific Ocean and every state on the Atlantic from Maine to Virginia, as well as Florida, losing only the Carolinas and Georgia to Mitt Romney. Republicans, in turn, hold sway inland. Although they win a lot of votes from southern conservatives along the Gulf Coast, much of their base can be found in the plains of the central states and in mountain regions such as the Appalachians, the Ozarks and the Rockies. This presents a demographic challenge for the Republican party because more than half of Americans live in coastal counties, including those along the Great Lakes, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. But it also creates difficulties for the politicians trying to govern this place. It stands to reason that people separated by such great distances are going to see things - such as an ocean superstorm like Sandy - in fairly different ways. For many of us who hail from the New York and New Jersey area, the storm changed the way we looked at the planet. The ocean we grew up with - and thought we knew from all those lazy summer days at the beach - took on a new character, surging higher and pushing farther onshore than before. The resulting damage was unimaginable, in that sense, and the dangers posed by climate change and the rising level of the ocean were never more real. But when you read Mr Fincher's website, you get the sense things could look different from Frog Jump. He didn't see his old rollercoaster washed away and he certainly isn't the sort to look for more action on global warming. As it turns out, he's been battling the Environmental Protection Agency over federal proposals to limit dust pollution. He sees such plans as a threat to life in rural areas, where people kick up lots of dust by driving pickups on dirt roads and ploughing their fields. He's kind of pro-dust. Indeed, you could say Mr Fincher is a regular prince of the soil. In his web biography, he emphasises his local loyalties. He mentions that he is a managing partner of a "seventh generation west Tennessee based agribusiness," a lifetime member of the National Rifle Association, and a participant since the age of nine in a "southern gospel music singing ministry started by his family over 60 years ago." Delving into his website helped me change my mind about the 67 House Republicans. When I first heard of their opposition, I felt they were turning their backs on those of us in New York and New Jersey. Now I'm growing more inclined to believe that they weren't facing this way in the first place.