7 country clubs in Country Club Republican John Boehner's Ohio district have closed since 2012. GM plant closing left district bereft of execs who could afford the dues. Mercifully, Boehner retired in 2015-Wall St. Journal, 7/19/18

“In 1992, the [Ohio 8th] district was represented by Republican John Boehner, the former House speaker. He voted for the North American Free Trade Agreement, and helped pave the way for the Trans-Pacific Partnership….Seven area golf courses, long establishment Republican strongholds, have closed since 2012. Without the GM plant, “there is no middle-level management that can afford the dues structure.””… 

7/19/18, “America’s Factory Towns, Once Solidly Blue, Are Now a GOP Haven,“ Wall St. Journal, Bob Davis and Dante Chinni (print ed., July 20) 

“A generation ago, Democrats represented much of the country’s manufacturing base. Now, it’s in GOP hands, a swing remaking both parties” 

“The Republican Party has become the party of blue-collar America. 

After the 1992 election, 15 of the 20 most manufacturing-intensive Congressional districts in America were represented by Democrats. Today, all 20 are held by Republicans.... 

These changes are evident in Ohio’s Eighth Congressional district, long a Republican bastion in the Cincinnati suburbs. 

In 1992, the district was represented by Republican John Boehner, the former House speaker. He voted for the North American Free Trade Agreement, and helped pave the way for the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade deal among the U.S. and 11 Pacific-Rim nations that Mr. Trump pulled out of on his first workday in office.

From 1990, when Mr. Boehner was elected, to 2015, the percentage of the workforce employed in manufacturing in his district declined from 30% to 21%. It moved up in the ranking of manufacturing intensive districts, from No. 27 to No. 12, because the country’s concentration of manufacturing workers declined even more. General Motors Co. closed a nearby factory in 2008 that employed 2,400 people. NCR Corp. moved its headquarters out of the area in 2009. 

Seven area golf courses, long establishment Republican strongholds, have closed since 2012. Without the GM plant, “there is no middle-level management that can afford the dues structure anymore,” said Steve Jurick, executive director of the Miami Valley Golf Association. 

Mr. Boehner retired in 2015, as the growing power of populist conservatives in the House made his caucus more difficult to manage. His successor is Republican Warren Davidson, a member of the Freedom Caucus that bedeviled Mr. Boehner.

Though he has criticized across-the-board tariffs, he has supported Mr. Trump’s tariffs on Chinese goods. Like Mr. Trump, Mr. Davidson faults the WTO for failing to rein in China, whose imports have battered the district’s many small metal fabrication plants.

At a meeting with local business leaders in May, he likened trade to a basketball game. “They are not calling fouls and no one is taking free throws,” he told the group. “I’m glad President Trump is making them call fouls.”

The message goes over well with factory owners and workers in the district.

“A lot of our workers voted for Trump,” says Neil Douglas, a Democrat who is president of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers in Middletown, Ohio. “The Democrats around here—sometimes we do feel like the party left us.”"

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Added: That Putin is amazing:

18 Ohio democrat precinct captains flipped and crossed party lines to vote in a March 2016 Republican primary for Trump. This was 4 months before a single email had been released!:

4/5/2017, "Democrats still ignoring the people who could have helped them defeat Trump, Ohio party leaders say," Washington Post, William Wan

"In Mahoning County - a Democratic stronghold decimated by the manufacturing industry's decline - [County Democrat Party Chair David] Betras was seeing GOP yard signs suddenly popping up. During the primaries [March 15, 2016], he learned that 18 of his own Democratic precinct captains had crossed party lines to vote for Trump. Some areas had to print extra Republican primary ballots just to keep up with the demand.

"That's when I knew something was wrong," he said.

He warned Clinton that she had lost all credibility with working-class voters by waffling on trade and offering tepid solutions."...
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