Lara Trump

Opinion contributor

The road to the White House runs directly through the heart of Ohio, and President Trump wouldn’t have it any other way. The Buckeye State has been thriving since my father-in-law took office, and voters who are enjoying better job prospects and more money in their paychecks aren’t going to trade that newfound prosperity for the discredited socialist policies being offered by the radical Democrats.

That’s something I’ve observed time and again during my visits to Ohio, and my latest conversation with voters in Columbus only reinforced my faith that Ohioans will turn out in even greater numbers to support the president’s re-election this November than they did when they gave Donald Trump a convincing margin of victory over Hillary Clinton in 2016. As is the case everywhere I go, a significant number of the voters I met with in Columbus one day before the massive Keep America Great rally in Toledo are lifelong Democrats who have never even considered voting for a Republican until now.

Ronald Reagan famously quipped that he didn’t leave the Democratic Party, but rather the Democratic Party left him and millions of other patriotic Americans behind as it lurched leftward. The same thing is taking place today, as extremists tighten their control over the party and seek to drive out anyone who doesn’t fully embrace their far-left ideology.

Just recently, self-proclaimed democratic-socialist Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez mused that "in any other country, Joe Biden and I would not be in the same party." That’s quite a revealing statement! The former vice president is a reliably doctrinaire liberal, but in the eyes of uncompromising radicals such as AOC, that’s simply not enough. They consider anyone who doesn’t completely accept their worldview an enemy, barely distinguishable from a Republican.

Just ask Rep. Jeff Van Drew, a New Jersey Democrat who was forced to switch parties after Democrat leaders made it clear that he would have no future in their party unless he defied the will of his constituents by voting in favor of the politically-motivated impeachment of President Trump.

Just as Van Drew found a welcoming new home in the GOP, millions of other former Democrat voters across the country will have the opportunity to take a stand against the creeping socialism that is consuming their old party by helping to re-elect Donald Trump in November.

My father-in-law is no ideologue – he’s a pragmatist whose abiding and overarching goal has always been to make this country stronger, wealthier, and just plain greater. He’s done exactly that over the past three years, and the people of Ohio know that as well as anybody.

The state unemployment rate, which stood at a discouraging 5.2% after eight years of President Obama’s economic mismanagement, has fallen by a full percentage point thanks to more than 120,000 new jobs that have been created statewide since President Trump took the reins.

All those new jobs are an encouraging sign, but it’s even more encouraging to know that my father-in-law’s policies are also significantly boosting the incomes of working people. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, for instance, saved the average Ohioan nearly $1,500 on their federal income taxes in 2018. On top of that, the glut of job openings has forced companies to compete with each other to attract skilled employees by offering higher wages and better benefits. In the strong and growing Trump economy, the lowest-paid workers are experiencing much faster income growth than the nation’s top earners, with median wage growth increasing by an astonishing 4.5 percent for those at the bottom of the income ladder.

The Democrats want to erase those gains by imposing their socialist, big-government agenda of tax hikes, extravagant spending projects such as the “Green New Deal,” taxpayer-funded subsidies for illegal immigrants, and other policies that will return our economy to the stagnation of the Obama years. Judging from the reactions I saw in Columbus, that message isn’t going to sell very well against the backdrop of Ohio’s economic resurgence.

Fortunately, the Democrats will have a tough time winning the White House without Ohio’s electoral votes, and they’ll have an even tougher time convincing Buckeye State voters to vote against this president after all he’s done to improve their lives.

Lara Trump is a senior advisor to Donald J. Trump for President, Inc. and President Trump’s daughter-in-law.