John Kasich's Not So Secret Extremism

John Kasich’s (not so) secret extremism: How the “moderate” alternative to Trump led a Planned Parenthood witchhunt in Ohio

The Ohio governor has been lauded this campaign season for his supposedly reasonable politics. Just one problem...

HEATHER DIGBY PARTON

As all eyes turn to the big states up for grabs in next Tuesday’s primaries, it’s probably a good time to take another look at the alleged “grown-up” in the GOP primary, Ohio Governor John Kasich. Against all odds, he’s the last man standing against the Trump-Cruz juggernaut and his only hope at this point is to gather all of Ohio’s delegates for Romney’s pipe-dream of a negotiation at the GOP convention, conveniently being held in Cleveland this summer.

When I wrote about Kasich back in July, it was a fairly lighthearted look at a guy with a volatile personality and a very short fuse. It was unlikely at the time that he would ever become a serious candidate, what with that deep, deep bench of sexy candidates he was up against. In those more innocent times, it was simply assumed that either one of the hot young guns like Scott Walker, Bobby Jindal or Marco Rubio would land on top or seasoned veterans backed by enormous wealth like Jeb Bush, Chris Christie or Rick Perry would use their experience and political savvy to upset them. If someone had said we would end up at this point in the race with Donald Trump leading, Ted Cruz nipping at his heels and John Kasich making a play for Ohio so that he could leverage his delegates at the convention to deny Donald Trump the nomination, we would have said they needed to go ask Dr. Ben Carson for a professional consultation.

But here we are, and there are polls showing that John Kasich is ahead in Ohio. (Others have Trump leading.) So it’s possible he’ll be able to pull off this gambit. It’s also possible he will flop almost as badly as Marco Rubio is likely to flop in Florida. Kasich came in third in Michigan, a state similar to his own and one in which despite some anecdotal evidence that Democrats crossed over to vote for him, Ted Cruz, the unpalatable extremist, edged him out. His message about being the only grown up in the room still isn’t setting the world on fire.

All the press descending on Ohio over the course of the next week will probably focus on the state’s economy. That’s the issue that seems to be animating the campaign at this stage and Ohio’s history as an important swing state brings all that into focus. Kasich  will tout his record there (in fact, touting his record is all he ever does), while Trump will dismiss his successes as being nothing more than good luck due to the fracking industry creating economic wealth in the state. It’s unlikely that either will convince many Ohioans of anything. After all, Kasich is the governor, so it’s not as if he can tell them something they don’t already know, and Trump pretty much lives on cable news.

But it will be interesting to see if any of the national media there will take a look at this story:

Staff of a Columbus, Ohio Planned Parenthood clinic were greeted Mondaymorning with a freshly painted message in red scrawled on the outside of their clinic: “SATAN DEN OF BABYKILLERS GOD SEE ALLLL Mark 9:14.”

It’s just the latest in a string of vandalism acts against Planned Parenthood since the bogus “Center for Medical Progress” released its fraudulent videos. But Ohio is actually one of the ground zero states for anti-abortion activism and the genial 1950s dad, John Kasich, is their most powerful and ruthless leader. For all of his alleged caring and sharing for the poor and weeping in public, he’s the women of Ohio’s most merciless adversary when it comes to their reproductive freedom.

It’s no surprise that anti-choice zealots are vandalizing one of the few Planned Parenthood clinics left in the state. Just two weeks ago Kasich came off the presidential trail to sign a bill to pull all federal funding from the clinics, cutting all state aid tied to insurance companies that cover abortion. It’s a cruel measure that will also deny funding for the other life-saving and health enhancing services that Planned Parenthood provides to tens of thousands of women.

And the whole thing is based upon those hideous hoax “baby parts” videos, the makers of which are under indictment in Texas for breaking laws in the making of them. Despite the fact that every single investigation in states across the country has not found any proof of wrongdoing, states like Texas are ignoring the evidence and continuing to use them as an excuse to shut down clinics. John Kasich’s Attorney General (and former U.S. Senator) Mike DeWine did not find any evidence that the organization was breaking laws but he went the extra mile to launch spurious attacks on them with phony “inquiries” into whether or not the clinics used “humane methods” of dealing with the fetal tissue. (They follow the same laws and rules that are followed by all medical researchers.)