Think-tank VP returns to rural Ohio hometown, finds growing wariness of Trump but continued support of his policies

Darrell West, vice president of the Brookings Institution, a Washington, D.C., think tank, grew up in Eaton, Ohio, a town of 8,400 in Preble County, pop. 42,000, west of Dayton. He returned recently for his 50-year high-school class reunion and reports that he found in this place with "conservative tenor" a growing wariness about Donald Trump, who won 78 percent of the county's vote in 2020.

Darrell West

"Many of the people I encountered had voted for Trump in 2020 but displayed surprising hesitancy about his possible 2024 candidacy," West writes. "On the one hand, nearly all of them liked his policy agenda. They openly scorned what they saw as the Democrats’ turn to the left and Biden’s ineffectiveness in dealing with inflation, Covid, foreign policy, and border security. They wanted someone who would keep government spending in check, slow the speed of the pandemic (without mask mandates or mandatory vaccinations), and stop the flow of immigrants across our southern border.

"Yet on the other hand, they didn’t like Trump’s abrasiveness, wondered what to make of the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection, and preferred someone who would follow Trump’s line but not antagonize so many people. Their ideal candidate seemed to be someone who supported Trumpism but with a nicer persona. In general, many of them told me they hoped Trump would not run, but that someone with his policy views would become the GOP nominee. This is consistent with data compiled by the Brookings Primaries Project based on an analysis of 2022 congressional primary candidates."

The lesson for Republicans, West writes, is "A nicer version of Trump, at least from a personality and public presentation standpoint, clearly would be the strongest GOP nominee for heartland voters. If Trump is the nominee, some Republican voters fear that campaign could reelect Joe Biden."

Preble County (Wikipedia map)

West says most of his Ohio acquaintances hope Biden doesn't run because he is too old, but he worries what might happen then: "The party could end up with a progressive candidate who would harness the anger unleashed by the court decision, mobilize mass voters, and make 2024 completely unlike 2020. Of course, that would fuel sentiment in the heartland that the Democratic Party has been taken over by extremists and raise the level of conflict and antipathy between the two sides. The only safe prediction in that situation is a high-stakes election, record turnout from both sides, and political adversaries who neither trust nor like the opposition. If you think America is highly polarized now, it actually could get a lot worse and turn violent in ways that would shock both Americans and foreigners."

That relates to the big issue of the day, the Supreme Court's removal of the right to abortion, West writes: "While most of the people I knew in D.C. bemoaned the decision as a betrayal of promises made during Senate confirmation hearings and a tragic rollback of women’s rights, a number of acquaintances in rural Ohio applauded the decision. Some of my hometown folks had spent decades organizing the grassroots, rallying churchgoers, running for local office, and supporting pro-life candidates financially. For them, the court decision represented the culmination of a life’s work and evidence of how their political activities over several decades had paid off. . . . Although Republicans were pleased with the court decision, several recognized the new abortion decision would further divide the country, generate a massive counter-offensive from progressives, and pit state against state in a dangerous manner. They wondered what it would mean for other issues such as same-sex marriage. Despite their general conservatism, they recognized that same-sex marriage had become broadly accepted in many places around the country and that conservatives did not have the same ethical ground on that topic as they did when it came to life and death debates over fetuses."