John Kasich is no moderate: The media darling of 2016 doesn’t deserve the “centrist” hype

[DonViejo]

Sure, he embraced Medicaid expansion. But John Kasich also peddles economic quackery and social conservatism

LUKE BRINKER

John Kasich on Tuesday will become the 16th prominent Republican to declare a 2016 presidential candidacy, and while the Ohio governor is a long shot to capture the GOP nod, he’s the prohibitive favorite to win the media’s quadrennial Reasonable Republican primary, representing the road less traveled for a Republican Party that has descended further into right-wing kookery in the Obama era.

At a time when reflexive opposition to President Obama’s policies has led conservatives to rail against policies they had once championed, Kasich circumnavigated conservative legislators in his own party to expand Medicaid under the president’s Affordable Care Act, bringing health insurance to more than 400,000 low-income Ohioans. The governor has been unapologetic in defending his decision to accept the ACA’s Medicaid funds, casting it as part of his Christian duty to aid the “downtrodden.” While a Republican wielding Christianity to justify his policy preferences may be the proverbial dog-bites-man story, it is unusual to see a high-ranking GOP official echo the Social Gospel ethos traditionally associated with the religious left. And as my colleague Simon Maloy noted this spring, the remarkable success of Ohio’s Medicaid expansion may well put Kasich’s more callous GOP opponents in an especially awkward position, forcing them to answer for their refusal to support expanded healthcare access.

Kasich’s Medicaid heresy is easily his most prominent, given its inextricable link to a law Republicans have decried as the epitome of socialist tyranny. (Nonsensically, Kasich insists that Obamacare and Medicaid expansion are two separate issues, and that the former can be repealed without sacrificing the latter.) But Kasich has also parted ways with the hard right on immigration reform — albeit after years of opposing reform – and on the basic humanity of gay people. (Like every other Republican running for president, Kasich opposes marriage equality as a matter of policy, but he attended a same-sex wedding this month, and his campaign launch video features what appears to be a gay couple.)

Does this record a moderate make? Scan coverage of the governor, and you’d certainly think so. Politico dubbed Kasich an “Obamacare-loving moderate”; US News lauded Kasich’s “centrist approach,” contrasting his pragmatism with that of his GOP rivals; the Wall Street Journal, paradoxically, trumpeted Kasich’s blend of “conservative orthodoxy” and “liberal policies.” Even the liberal New Republic got in on the Kasich love, with Elizabeth Stoker Bruenig hailing his “sturdy brand of Christian politics” and his purported challenge to “anti-welfare capitalist interests.”

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http://www.salon.com/2015/07/21/john_kasich_is_no_moderate_the_media_darling_of_2016_doesnt_deserve_the_centrist_hype/

more
http://www.salon.com/2015/07/21/john_kasich_is_no_moderate_the_media_darling_of_2016_doesnt_deserve_the_centrist_hype/

[Adenoid_Hynkel]

1. He a legend in the media's mind

but polling in low single digits in the primaries.

Bastard only lucked into re-election for governor because the Dems nominated a trainwreck to oppose him.

Had he faced Strickland or someone stronger, he would have been sent home.