Dick Morris: GOP Surges in Midwest
If Democrats comfort themselves by saying that Donald Trump’s electoral college victory in 2016 was a fluke, they need to look at the longer term.
There has been a massive shift to the Republican Party in Ohio, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Michigan since the elections of 2008.
This region was once the heartland of the GOP (Grant, Hayes, Garfield, Harrison and McKinley all came from Ohio).
It swung to the Democrats as organized labor’s ranks swelled during the New Deal.
But now that the region sees the wreckage of the Democrats’ social and economic policies, the GOP is having a resurgence.
Look at the comparisons of the partisan composition of the state legislatures in the region between 2008 and today:
Spurred on by East and West Coast elites, liberals tell themselves that it is the “deplorables” who tip the balance with their bigotry against blacks, Latinos and immigrants.
But the fact is that the economic policies of former President Barack Obama’s administration have amply illustrated that, just as JFK said, “a rising tide lifts all boats,” so they now see that a “receding tide strands all boats.”
The anti-growth, anti-jobs, anti-business, high-tax policies of the left have brought ruin to the Midwest.
After a recovery under President Ronald Reagan, it became, once again, the Rust Belt under Obama.
Fears about the results in 2018 and 2020 should be calmed as Republicans contemplate this fundamental shift.
It is a swing as significant at the move of the Democratic South to Republicans during the Nixon years or the shift in New England from Republican to Democrat in recent decades.
While such changes are not permanent — in politics, nothing is — they do last a very long time.
Dick Morris is a former adviser to President Bill Clinton as well as a political author, pollster and consultant.
His most recent book, “Rogue Spooks,” was written with his wife, Eileen McGann.
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