I think another thing is that there’s a lot of natural lived diversity. What I mean is, for example, my parents middle middle class neighborhood street looks like: black family, white family, Indian family, Hispanic family, European first generation family, just all in a row. And that’s pretty common. I think in part getting back to the housing thing, it’s within reach of most people.
As for the “extreme conservatives,” I don’t know. I think it’s one of those things that the media likes to pounce on and blows out of proportion. Yeah sometimes they do dumb stuff but generally speaking radically conservative proposals get floated by fringe political folks in red states just like radically liberal proposals get floated in blue states, then never goes anywhere. I think it’s more fodder for the news-tainment industry than actual policy making.
I'm always reading about attempts to put extreme conservatives on the state school board and restrict discussion of evolution and also avoid discussing uncomfortable issues around slavery and the founding of the country - that must not have had much impact. For housing, I kind of understand why Texas is much less expensive to live in, partly because they have those endless cities across the plains.