You know adaher, some of your points seem to be getting more reasonable over time. This concerns me.
More seriously, we have a real problem if the President doesn’t believe in counter-cyclic fiscal policy, as all Presidents after Eisenhower have.
Well McCain is a bad comparison, because McCain is more centrist. I admit that nobody I know of is as talented a bureaucratic infighter as Cheney. So let me modify and say Representative Cheney. When he was the rep from Rhode Island, Cheney was always willing to cut deals. And he was very very conservative. Relentlessly so.
It’s this combination of mild demeanor and procedural realpolitik that makes Kasich the nefarious “moderate” who understands what it means to govern and thus is actively despised by the conservative base. Unless the filibuster is torn down completely, any Republican who becomes president will have to operate this way. Kasich is a filthy rotten moderate RINO for admitting it.
[/INDENT] I say Kasich is an investment banker. He’s a committed (and backwards) economic conservative in favor of budget-busting tax cuts for the rich and social security cuts for the remainder. But he knows that gridlock is bad for business.
I’m not certain that’s true. I don’t think it was true in 2012. The people who didn’t vote for Romney (who voted in 2008) were the same people who are lining up behind Trump this year–less educated, blue collar white voters. They aren’t against Social Security and Medicare, but they are against Medicaid and Obamacare. They are against immigration, legal or illegal. They think Obama is trying to destroy the country by making it foreign. They have a better than even chance of thinking Obama is a Muslim who wasn’t born in the US.
These aren’t John Kasich voters for the same reason they were not Mitt Romney voters.
He’s got the right idea, but the term he should be using is “Western”, which includes atheism and agnosticism. But Western values are something we all agree on, and the way forward for all cultures.
Graham is right. We shouldn’t export Christian values, but if liberals are right about one thing, it’s that political correctness should be taught to all cultures. End sexism, racism, homophobia, etc.
Kasich should just repackage it and put college professors in charge of it.
No, it would be great if it was just called something different. If you read what he actually says about his plan, it’s basically just teaching liberalism to other cultures.
Then it’s quite possible that what he wants is essentially liberal, but he’s calling it what he’s calling it to appeal to the Republican base. The best part is, it’s not a lie. Judeo-Christian values are essentially liberal values.
On the issue of treatment of women, equality of man, etc., we all agree on those values, and they did originate in Western thought, which in turn grew out of the Judeo-Christian tradition.
No. He has the wrong idea. You may want him to export Western values, but he wants to export Christianity.
He has already tried that on different occasions in Ohio.
The legislature passed an act that permitted organizations to link up with school boards to provide tutors to students in need. If the organization met certain criteria, the state would throw money at the participants. When the executive branch published the rules under which the partnerships would operate, Kasich had managed to insert a clause that said the organizations had to be connected to a religious group or they would not receive the funds. Nothing in the actual law passed mentioned religion as a necessary component. When challenged on that point, the Republican sponsors of the law passed by the Republican dominated legislature expressed surprise that such a rule had been inserted when they had not intended any such thing and had not included such a requirement in the law. (I mention the party affiliation to note that this was not a matter of inter-party politics and backpedaling.)
I think (FWIW) that you’ve mixed up a few issues: how likely somebody is to win a free-for-all Battle Royale-style presidential contest, how best to arrange an R win in the general, and how likely somebody is to win the actual primaries-then-convention-then-general system we have.
Kasich might indeed be, as you say, the best hope to upset Clinton in the general. But if he has not even a snowball’s chance of being the nominee, he still deserves very long odds on being inaugurated in January. You can’t win the Super Bowl if you don’t even make the post season.
You’re quoting Betfair’s odds on being inaugurated in January. And that’s the only question those odds answer. They don’t even provide much insight into smaller-scale questions such as “Who will win the SC primary?”.
