THERE are plenty of Americans who share the same loathing for George Bush that is common across Western Europe, including Britain. A fair few could be found on the flight from Washington to Salt Lake City, which was unable to land because a blanket of security was being thrown around Air Force One as the President arrived in Utah.

As passengers were informed that they were being diverted to Pocatello, Idaho, for refuelling, shrill metropolitan voices were raised in anger. “I did not vote for that man!” a woman shouted. But vast tracts of the country, more often than not in those “flyover states” between the liberal East and West coasts, did vote for him, and — even as Delta 573 headed north — Mr Bush was being fêted by an adoring crowd of thousands on the ground.

While a sizeable anti-Bush protest had been held earlier, that was scarcely representative of a state where 75 per cent are Mormons and 72 per cent of voters chose to re-elect the President in 2004. Utah is the most Republican state in the country. This is partly because the Mormons have fierce views on abortions and gay marriages (they also forbid alcohol, tobacco and caffeine). But it is also because of Utah’s insulation from the America that British visitors usually encounter.

Nowhere is this more true than in the town of Randolph, where Mr Bush received 96 per cent of the vote in 2004. It is the place that loves the President more than anywhere else in America (and probably the world).

To get to Randolph you drive 170 miles north from Salt Lake City through mountains with nothing much either side as far as the eye can see. There, a crocodile of universally white five-year-olds comes down the main street with their teacher looking for “signs of summer because it sure disappears fast round here”. Homes have neat flowerbeds and, sometimes, strange horned contraptions on wheels, which are used to practice roping steers.

Linda Hoffman leans over her garden fence to give a friend some fish for a sick husband. Her husband, Harold, worries about people coming in with “new ideas about doing things different” and tourists selling drugs over at Bear Lake.

To the outsider’s eye at least, this looks like what America was supposed to have been — but probably never was — in the 1950s. Kevin Kearl, the Mayor of the town, who works as a miner, says that in the 35 years he has lived there a few stores have closed, but little else has changed. He is not blindly uncritical of Mr Bush, but says: “People around here share a lot of the same values with him; we believe in God and country.”

Nor does he think that events in Iraq or the handling of Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath have done much to shake that loyalty. “Most people I talk to think Bush is doing the best he can and is still on the right track.”

Gage Slusser, the postmaster, who arrived from Chicago when his wife divorced him 13 years ago, is one of only 17 people in Randolph who voted for John Kerry in 2004 and claims to have detected a slight softening of support for the President. Others suggest that he is a “bit weird” and refuse to talk to him. Sometimes he must feel like “the only gay in the village” in Little Britain — except that there are no gays in this village.

Mr Kearl’s wife, Valence, says that there were a couple of boys from Randolph who turned out to be gay, “but we only found out after they had grown up and left”.

The mayor is concerned that The Times will present his town as a place “full of hayseeds — like we are naive or prejudiced — we’re not, these are good people”. Indeed, they probably are. Nor are they stupid, but they are certainly different from the America represented by the clatter of the urban East Coast media.

Two years ago they were among the 50 million voters who helped to re-elect Mr Bush, to the incredulity of liberals in America and Europe. Now, with the President significantly more unpopular, they are in a minority.

What has not changed, however, is that their voice is still not often heard.

Times Recommends

• Fish and chip shops ‘selling cobbler as cod’
• T in the Park festival at Kinross
• Body Watch