Republican presidential candidate, Ohio Governor John Kasich, has been trying to present himself to the electorate as the reasonable, moderate choice in the GOP clown car. His stands on immigration and his acceptance of the Affordable Care Act for Ohioans are nearly the polar opposite of the stands taken by his fellow travelers. His soft spoken demeanor during the debates, on the campaign trail and during interviews would lead one to believe that he is a “moderate” Republican. Except that, on closer examination, Gov. Kasich is anything but, he’s just quieter about his radical right wing positions.
On immigration, his actions scream radical. From David Leopold at Huffington Post
At Saturday’s Republican debate Kasich claimed he’d send Congress an immigration reform plan within his first 100 days in office. A week earlier, just before his impressive second-place finish in the New Hampshire primary, Kasich even seemed to show compassion toward undocumented immigrants. “I couldn’t even imagine,” he said, “how we would even begin to think about taking a mom or a dad out of a house when they have not committed a crime since they’ve been here, leaving their children in the house. I mean, that is not, in my opinion, the kind of values that we believe in.”
So it’s worth asking: Do Kasich’s actions as governor of Ohio match his kinder gentler tone on the presidential campaign trail?
Unfortunately, not so much.
Under Kasich Ohio has enthusiastically joined Texas and 24 other GOP-led states in a brazenly partisan lawsuit aimed at blocking President Obama’s plan to defer the deportation of nearly 5 million undocumented youth and parents of U.S. citizens, including an estimated 82,000 Ohio residents. Shortly after the President announced his actions–known as DAPA and DACA expansion–the Republican governors and attorneys general sought out a sympathetic judge who predictably enjoined the deferred action guidance which is now pending before the U.S. Supreme Court.
In the meantime, the very moms and dads that Kasich spoke so compassionately about on the GOP primary debate stage continue to live in fear that their families will be torn apart at any moment.
Gov. Kasich also supports discretionary spending cuts and block grants for federal food stamp and Medicaid programs which would be a disaster for the poor. He has also proposed cutting Social Security.
And then there is the big issue of the governor’s “pro-life” policy to which TBS’s “Full Frontal” host Samantha Bee described as: “In the nauseating bus terminal restroom that is the Republican primary, Kasich initially seems like the least disgusting stall.” The rest of her monologue is devastatingly funny and very true.