Free Republic

Trump is no Romney. He is running an unsubtle, racist campaign that has particularly targeted Latinos. His chances of winning swing states with significant Latino populations -- Florida, Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico -- are extremely low. But he doesn't need them to win. All he has to do is carry the Rust Belt -- a region perfectly attuned to Trump's fiery denunciations of American trade policy and his angry condemnation of Washington corruption. While Romney hailed free trade, globalization and "creative destruction," Trump rails against the North American Free Trade Agreement and promises to bring jobs back home.

Waist-high weeds and a crumbling old Chevy mark the entrance to a rust-colored factory complex on the edge of town here, seemingly another monument to the passing of the golden age of American industry. But deep inside the 14-acre site, the thwack-thwack-thwack sound of metal on metal tells a different story. “We’re holding our own,” said Greg Hess, who is looking to hire draftsmen and machine operators at the company he runs, Youngstown Bending and Rolling. “I feel good that we saved this place from the wrecking ball.” The turnaround is part of a transformation spreading across the heartland of...

Top 10 States Americans Are Fleeing #1: New York New York has led the nation in domestic out-migration since the late 1990s. The New York Post reported in 2011 that "62 percent of New Yorkers planning to leave cited economic factors — including cost of living (30 percent), taxes (19 percent) and the job environment (10 percent) — as the main reasons." 2012-2013 state-to-state net domestic migration: -104,470 2. Illinois http://www.realclearpolitics.com/lists/out_migration_states/illinois.html 3. California http://www.realclearpolitics.com/lists/out_migration_states/california.html4. New Jersey http://www.realclearpolitics.com/lists/out_migration_states/new_jersey.html 5. Pennsylvania http://www.realclearpolitics.com/lists/out_migration_states/pennsylvania.html 6. Michigan http://www.realclearpolitics.com/lists/out_migration_states/michigan.html 7. Ohio http://www.realclearpolitics.com/lists/out_migration_states/ohio.html8. Connecticut http://www.realclearpolitics.com/lists/out_migration_states/connecticut.html9. Kansas http://www.realclearpolitics.com/lists/out_migration_states/kansas.html10. New Mexico http://www.realclearpolitics.com/lists/out_migration_states/new_mexico.html

Six cities in Liaoning province, including Shenyang and Anshan, recently announced they are converting abandoned industrial sites to farmland. Dongguan, once a booming factory center, is on the verge of bankruptcy as companies close, leaving the local government severely cash-strapped. Just two years after China overtook the U.S. to become the world’s largest manufacturer, the country faces the prospect of decades of de-industrialization. And there is little Beijing can do to arrest the slide. Globalization once propelled China. Hong Kong manufacturers flocked to that country’s coastal regions in the early 1980s largely because labor costs were low and regulation lax....

“I hear Pittsburgh is very nice this time of year.” -- A senior Romney campaign staffer talking to Power Play about the strategy for the closing weeks of the campaign. Two weeks ago, Mitt Romney trailed in five Rust Belt battleground states by an average of 6.9 points in the Real Clear Politics Average of polls. This morning, his average deficit was just 3.2 points. While all 11 swing states have moved his direction since the Republican nominee’s boffo performance in his first debate with President Obama, Romney has seen the most significant improvement in the core column of the...

‘A step in the right direction.” That’s what Barack Obama said in Poland, Ohio, about Friday’s Bureau of Labor Statistics unemployment report, which showed only 80,000 net new jobs and unemployment remaining at 8.2 percent. The thought will occur to many, not all of them Obama detractors, that this was at best a baby step. It’s not enough to keep up with population growth, much less to restore the low unemployment rates of most of the 1990s and 2000s. Another thought will occur to professional amateur political strategists: Why did the president’s campaign schedule a two-day bus tour of northern...

As President Obama is in the middle of a two-day “Betting on America” bus tour across Ohio and Pennsylvania, political analysts said he will have to reassemble the “hope and change” demographic coalition of 2008 that relied on a high turnout of youths and blacks, and winning a larger-than-usual percentage of Hispanics and whites and he somehow has to reach working-class white voters who have turned away from him in large numbers since 2008.” In 2010, voters sent a strong message of discontent to Mr. Obama by electing Republicans in nearly every competitive race in the Rust Belt. Furthermore, each...

Barack Obama’s political base always has been more “creative class” than working class—and his policies have favored that base, seeming to cater to energized issue and identity constituencies including African-Americans, Hispanics, gays, and greens, often at the expense of blue-collar workers. Yet improving conditions for those workers—particularly in the industrial heartland—could save his flagging presidency. The industrial zone’s four key states—Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania—constitute the most critically contested territory in this year’s contest. Fifty-four electoral votes are at play here, with Pennsylvania’s 20 votes alone equaling all those at stake in the much-ballyhooed battleground of the Intermountain West (Colorado,...

When the unemployment rate rose in most states last month, it underscored the extent to which the deep recession, the anemic recovery and the lingering crisis of joblessness are beginning to reshape the nation’s economic map. ... Unemployment in the South is now higher than it is in the Northeast and the Midwest, which include Rust Belt states that were struggling even before the recession.

This past week, President Obama tried to sell his new “millionaires’ tax” to the Rust Belt. “What’s great about this country is our belief that anyone can make it,” he said in Cincinnati on Thursday, praising “the idea that any one of us can open a business or have an idea that could make us millionaires.” But who are the millionaires Obama is talking about? And will a tax on them help the economy? Let’s examine a few presumptions about the man with the monocle on the Monopoly board. 1. Millionaires are rich. Being rich has gotten more expensive. A...

The slogans of Big Brother's ruling party in George Orwell's 1984 included Love is Hate and War is Peace. Today's leftists unwinding the country back to pre-constitutional poverty call themselves Progressives. They are truly Regressives, but perhaps truth is too hard for politicians. The original thirteen colonies encouraged using free-standing timber for energy to promote development; later governments promoted coal, then oil and hydroelectric power for the same reasons. That, along with promoting roads and railroads, provided for the industrialization of North America, the process that produced American wealth. Our Progressives despise all that. The Progressives are reducing energy use...

Five Governor's Races Could Indicate GOP Success In 2012 By Chris Cillizza June 21, 2010 The roots of a Republican political renaissance in 2012 lie in the Rust Belt. That swath of manufacturing- based states in the Midwest -- Illinois, Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan -- with tentacles that reach as far east as Pennsylvania, has been the epicenter of the economic difficulties in the country over the past few years. Each state is hosting a competitive gubernatorial race this fall. Republicans argue that a clean sweep (or close to it) would immediately change the electoral calculus heading into the nationwide redistricting...

ELYRIA, OHIO -- The last time Barack Obama came to this struggling blue-collar city was during the 2008 presidential primary campaign, when he told workers at the National Gypsum drywall factory that if elected he would pursue a "job-creation agenda." Now, as President Obama returns here Friday, the drywall plant is closed, its 58 jobs victims of a steep downturn in housing construction. His day-long visit to the nation's withering manufacturing heartland is intended to show distressed and skeptical Americans that Obama is doing all he can to create jobs. For the president, this is an increasingly urgent mission, as...

Cap and Trade will be a disaster for what is left of manufacturing in this country. Right now, the Rust Belt is just rusty. With Cap and Trade, the rust will inevitably turn into dust. And, for what? Because some politically-driven environmentalists have trumped up a phony belief that mankind is completely killing the planet?

DAYTON, Ohio -- Here's an idea for saving Rust Belt cities: Tell bloggers and radio stations to stop calling your town a basket case. That was one suggestion from representatives of eight of the 10 cities labeled last year as America's fastest dying. They met at the Dayton Convention Center last weekend to swap ideas about how to halt the long skid that's turned cities like Detroit, Cleveland and Buffalo, N.Y., into shorthand for dystopia. The city representatives lunched on $6 sloppy Joes and commiserated through Power Point strategy sessions: Lure back former residents, entice entrepreneurs and artists, convert blighted...

Southern States Poach Businesses Amid Downturn By ANSLEY HAMAN When NCR Corp. started looking late last summer to move from its hometown of Dayton, Ohio, economic development agencies in the South pulled out all the stops in a bid to lure the 125-year-old company best known as a cash-register manufacturer. Georgia quickly offered more than $100 million in tax and training incentives. State officials connected NCR with six Georgia research universities willing to license new technologies and train workers. View Full Image Bloomberg News NCR and other companies are moving operations to the South. A Volkswagen plant is seen under...

While most attention has focused on the wave of foreclosures sweeping mostly middle-class, suburban Sunbelt neighborhoods from California to Florida, the nation's emptiest neighborhoods have remained concentrated in the same place for nearly a generation: the mostly minority, poor, urban neighborhoods of the American Rust Belt. An analysis by AP, based on data collected by the U.S. Postal Service and the HUD, shows the emptiest neighborhoods are clustered in places hit hard during the recession of the 1980s — cities such as Flint, Mich.; Columbus, Ohio; Buffalo, N.Y.; and Indianapolis. Federal lawmakers have designated nearly $6 billion over the past...

Most of President Obama's dramatic budget changes are likely to pass Congress, but expect even many Democrats to question his plan to create a "cap-and-trade" program for carbon dioxide. The plan would bring in some $646 billion over the next ten years according to the Obama budget office. The vast majority of the revenue supposedly would be used to create tax cuts for low-income families. Democrats from Rust Belt states are already skeptical. Their region would be hit hard by the new rules, especially those with large coal industries. A total of 15 Senate Democrats have signed a letter urging...

Senate Democrats are breaking with President Obama over his plan for sweeping new climate-change laws that he says will rake in billions of dollars to help offset massive budget deficits. The dissenters, mostly Democrats from Rust Belt states likely to be hit hardest by the proposed environmental rules, question the economic impact of the program that would cap carbon-dioxide emissions and then sell to businesses the right to emit that carbon dioxide. The senators also want their states to get a chunk of the windfall from selling the credits - $646 billion over 10 years by Mr. Obama's estimate. "We...

Tomorrow the Pittsburgh Steelers square off against the Baltimore Ravens, and the Philadelphia Eagles square off against the Arizona Cardinals. The winners will go head to head on Feb. 1 in Super Bowl XLIII. If there ever was a time to crow about the wonders of rebuilding a city around a professional sports team, this would be it. Three of the four teams remaining in the play-offs hail from cities -- Baltimore, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh -- that in recent years spent billions rebuilding their downtowns around pro sports facilities and other community "anchors." Except that there's a problem. The teams...