Tom Piatak

March 25, 2008

There are few states more critical in American presidential elections than my own state of Ohio, which decided the 2004 election and last voted for the losing candidate in 1960.  Right now, the dreadful state economy poses a real challenge for the GOP, with the Columbus Dispatch reporting Friday that one in ten Ohioans now receives food stamps, the highest number in the state’s history.  Ohioans have seen the ruinous impact of free trade, with some 80% of Ohioans telling pollsters that free trade has hurt the country.  If John McCain wishes to win the state, he would do well to ignore such Panglossian economic advisers as Phil Gramm and Jack Kemp and advocate the policy articulated by past Ohio leaders such as William McKinley and Robert Taft:  economic nationalism.