[TheRealThing]

I have enjoyed this board for some time. I resolved a long time ago to quit posting- took up too much time. This controversy regarding Trump has caused me to throw over my resolution. Never would have thought my first post would be on politics.

I live in Wise County, Virginia- about seven miles from the Kentucky line. My family has long been involved in politics in both Kentucky and Virginia. I am a former chairman of the Republican Party in Wise County and a former member of the State Central Committee of the Republican party in Virginia.

I Support Donald Trump. He offers the best hope for the economic survival of the people in these mountains. Free trade is destroying small town and rural America. The destruction by a misguided trade policy of the industrial base of the upper South is tragic. Consider the job losses in small town Kentucky.
Ted Cruz has no answer for this and he tries not to talk about it. He is a free trader. He calls himself a free market Conservative, but his version of Conservatism is just another bow before the altar of big business. His ties to corporate interests are strong and pervasive. This alone makes him unfit to be President.

This country needs a President who is not for the special interests- something a free trader can never be. Under no circumstances could I support a partisan of free trade. A friend of mine from Jenkins called freee traders "economic traitors". He was correct.

I'm sure people on here know that I have posted on this at least a half dozen times, and the time frame for those posts has been something like the last two years now. But here goes again, and for those rolling their eyes I apologize. I still remember the sense of betrayal I felt when Ronald Reagan was there in support of the signing ceremony of NAFTA. Jimmy Carter was there too, and obviously the signer, Bill Clinton.

I didn't believe the hype then, and I don't believe it now (TPP). The jobs loss in this nation has been horrific, and when confronted about that little inconvenient tidbit, the free traders default comeback is "if not for free trade, an Apple IPhone would cost 2 thousand dollars." My response... who needs them? The wealth that was once visited upon the US Treasury is now cast to the four winds as governments of third world nations suddenly find themselves getting rich. And let's be honest here, the citizens of those nations still flounder in abject poverty.

And when Obama is gone and living on his estate in Hawaii, he won't give a flip about white poverty. Much less the nation which once led the world, and thanks largely to his efforts, by that time bereft of the energy needed to survive, or the industry needed to gear up should our military be called upon to defend us again.