At first glance, John Kasich’s approach to running for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination seems an odd one. When conservative voters are anxious, angry, betrayed, and vengeful, Kasich is deferential. When voters appear to want to see their boiling frustrations mirrored in their candidate of choice, Kasich offers comfort and understanding. From a psychological perspective, Kasich’s approach to appealing to the conservative voter is a mirror image of the tactics employed by Donald Trump. Both candidates contend that the nation is sick, but while Trump is standing by with a charged defibrillator Kasich offers end-of-life care. If Donald Trump is the abrasive gym coach screaming trite slogans at you from the bleachers, John Kasich is the paternalistic guidance counselor. Both approaches aim to channel the intangible, and often inchoate, apprehensions of an electorate that is justifiably consumed with fear for the nation’s security and economic health. Neither approach is, however, particularly conservative.
The Ohio governor has been the subject of praise from the pundit class for a recent campaign appearance that ended with a somber constituent asking for and receiving a hug. It was a genuinely tender moment, but it played to a type. Kasich’s campaign has been almost entirely one of transparent emotional manipulation.
To listen to Kasich in his appearance on CNN in Thursday’s second consecutive night of wide-ranging and illuminating town halls was to be privy first to a lot of heavy-handed sentiment and sloganeering.
“You know, the strength of America is not some guy or woman coming in on a white charger here to solve our problems,” Kasich told CNN host Anderson Cooper. “You’ve got to celebrate other people’s wins, and sometimes you’ve got to sit with them and cry, because that’s what we need in this country.”
“We have a right to build a wall,” Kasich insisted when asked, as every Republican has been, about Pope Francis’s comments regarding Donald Trump, “but I’ve got to tell you, there are too many walls between us.”
“We need bridges between us if we’re going to fix the problems in Washington because all they do is have walls,” he added.
“I’ll tell you another thing to worry about, sexual violence on campus,” said Kasich when asked about the issue of violence against women. “Can you imagine having someone beat up your daughter or beat up your mother? We have to have an all-out war on this.”
Kasich appropriated some threadbare themes from George W. Bush’s “compassionate conservatism” when he described “single women with children are the real heroes in America.” This was a response to a question from a working single mother in the audience who wanted to know how “bootstraps” conservatism could help ease her unique circumstances. Kasich’s response was boilerplate Bush-era Republicanism of the late 1990s; an increased child tax credit, balanced budgets and tax incentives to promote small business growth, and publicly subsidized job training. This moment of celebration for America’s “real heroes” was perhaps spoiled, however, by the next questioner – the brother of a soon-to-be-deployed Marine – who refocused Kasich’s attention on America’s foreign wars and the men and women who fight them.
When pressed on his record as governor, Kasich briefly dropped the sanctimony that has too often typified his campaign and was persuasive. Kasich is an accomplished and popular governor of a must-win state. He was an estimable congressman who knows how to navigate the federal legislature. He was a talk show host and is in possession of virtually unsurpassed communicative skills. He has run nine campaigns for Congress and two for statewide office, and he won them all. On paper, Kasich seems like a fairly vanilla Republican in the mold cast by George W. Bush – the last Republican to win the White House – and his appeal to a nervous nation is obvious. What he is not, however, is reflective of the Republican Party’s rightward drift over the last eight years.
From domestic violence to homelessness, from the working poor to health insurance access and expanded Medicaid; Kasich demonstrated that he views the federal government as a tool to engineer preferable social outcomes. “And they don’t have to do it my way,” the Ohio governor conceded while defending his decision to expand access to Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. “Each state should do what they want to do. But if you’re not going to do what I’m doing, then tell me what it is you’re going to do.” In other words, you’re going to have to do it my way.
The appeal of a Kasich-esque big government conservative paternalism is apparent in his polls. While his surge of support might not be enough to engineer a victory for him, his standing in the polls is strong enough now to justify Kasich’s determination to fight on well into March, secure a slate of delegates, and play kingmaker at the convention in his home state.
As National Review’s Alexis Levinson reported, Kasich will seek to capitalize on the months of time and campaign cash spent in New Hampshire’s media markets to create some momentum for him in neighboring Vermont and Massachusetts. From there, he will leverage his status as the governor next door when he tries for a victory in Michigan on March 8. If all goes according to plan, it’s on to Ohio for the critical winner-take-all primary on March 15. Kasich’s path to victory is a rocky one, but his desire and ability to play spoiler for the GOP’s electability wing is clear.
Kasich’s approach to the race is an interesting one. He is positioning himself as a defender of the Republican Party of yore. His is the GOP that last won the White House, and which has been dismantled amid a paradigm shift within the conservative movement. In some ways, John Kasich is as revanchist as Donald Trump. He promises a return to the status quo ante and relies on the irresistibly compelling nature of government to impose on the United States the restoration of an idealized past. While Trump uses brute force to convey his message, Kasich applies a gentler touch (as well as a healthy dash of guilt and sanctimony). Between the two of them, they have the support of a substantial plurality of the Republican electorate. The conservatism of the tea party revolution once thought ascendant within the GOP coalition is facing a real test today.
