Stuart Stevens knows Ohio. He worked for John Kasich, Rob Portman and focused on the state for George W. Bush and Mitt Romney. This piece in the Atlantic about what’s happened to the state since then is a fascinating look at the fascist takeover of the GOP: What happened to the Ohio GOP? For generations, it was the epitome of a sane, high-functioning party with a boringly predictable pro-business sentiment that seemed to perfectly fit the state. Today, it has been remade in the image of native son J. D. Vance, the first vice-presidential candidate to sanction coup-plotting against the U.S. government. In a speech to the Republican National Convention tonight that was virtually devoid of policy, he railed against corrupt elites and pledged his fealty to the man he once compared to heroin, suggesting that the American experiment depended on former President Donald Trump’s election. But don’t make the mistake of thinking this transformation was the result of a hostile takeover; that implies there was a fight. The truth is that the old guard surrendered to forces contrary to what it had espoused as lifelong values. Ohio was the home of Standard Oil, Dow Chemical, Goodyear Tires, and Procter and Gamble. Garrett Morgan, a co-founder of the Cleveland Association of Colored Men, devised an early version of the stoplight, a symbol of a state that thrived on normalcy. The Wright brothers invented the airplane in Dayton. The Taft family defined the Ohio Republican Party. Cincinnati-born President William Howard Taft…