OPINION:
The selection of Sen. J.D. Vance as former President Donald Trump’s running mate was set when they visited the site of the February 2023 train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio. President Biden was on a trip to Ukraine and Poland. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg was nowhere to be found.
Mr. Trump showed up, and Mr. Vance, who had just begun representing Ohio in the Senate, was with him, handing out cleaning supplies and water to the people in a town overwhelmed by the disaster. We later saw images of Mr. Trump taking first responders to McDonald’s and handing out red hats.
What the national media missed, however, was a simple statement that Mr. Trump kept repeating: “You are not forgotten.”
It was a powerful message to the frightened and overwhelmed people of that eastern Ohio community. I told my wife, “That’s the Donald Trump who won in 2016.”
When Mr. Vance’s selection was announced on Monday while I was on the convention floor, the media approached me for a response. A fellow Midwesterner will help the ticket in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.
More importantly, I noted that the story of his family’s challenges with addiction and poverty is not unlike that of many across America. They feel forgotten by the politicians in Washington.
Mr. Vance spoke of being raised by his grandmother as his single mother suffered from drug addiction and poverty. He rose out of that to join the Marine Corps and go on to graduate from Ohio State University and law school at Yale University. He rose up from his circumstances, but he never forgot his roots.
“In small towns like mine in Ohio, or next door in Pennsylvania, or in Michigan, in states all across our country, jobs were sent overseas and children were sent to war,” he said. “To the people of Middletown, Ohio, and all the forgotten communities in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Ohio, and every corner of our nation, I promise you this,” he said. “I will be a vice president who never forgets where he came from.”
Donald Trump fights for these voters.
While Republicans come out of their convention in Milwaukee united, Democrats are facing a total meltdown. It doesn’t matter which candidate the Democrats nominate next month in Chicago. Their ideas have failed us over the past four years.
Since Mr. Biden took office as president, prices have increased by 20%. In Wisconsin, the price of gasoline has gone up by well over a dollar a gallon. Housing prices in my state are up nearly 30%. My son and daughter-in-law will pay about $1,000 more monthly in mortgage payments for their home than they would have paid four years ago. That is real money.
Republicans gathered in my home state this week and confirmed Mr. Trump’s nomination for president of the United States. During his presidency, gas, food and housing prices were much lower. In addition, the border was much more secure than it is today, and violent crime was much less of a concern than it is now for many Americans.
Some elected Democrats and their elitist campaign supporters are calling for President Biden to step aside and let someone else run against Mr. Trump. They assert that his obvious cognitive decline hinders his chances of victory in November. They overlook that his failed policies have had him on shaky ground in the first place.
Vice President Kamala Harris shares their belief in the same flawed ideas. So does California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker. Many of them have proved how bad those policies are in their own states. Why would anyone promote them to be president when we would get more of the same high prices, illegal immigration and public safety risks?
President Biden’s real problem isn’t just his state of mind or his age; it is that his agenda has failed the American people.
Mr. Vance clearly laid that case out on Wednesday night in Milwaukee. He declared: “Joe Biden has been a politician in Washington as long as I’ve been alive. For half a century, he’s been a champion of every single policy initiative to make America weaker and poorer.”
We want a country that is stronger and more prosperous for every American. We need someone who will fight for every citizen of this great country. That person is Donald Trump.
• Scott Walker is president of Young America’s Foundation and served as the 45th governor of Wisconsin from 2011 to 2019.
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