What, John E. Sununu, WE'RE not your most "Right wing extremist blog"? We've failed you! - Granite Grok

What, John E. Sununu, WE’RE not your most “Right wing extremist blog”? We’ve failed you!

After all John, John Kasich has said the following:

“Isn’t that interesting,” Kasich said as the crowd around her gasped. However, without mentioning his political allegiance or correcting the voter, Kasich went on to position himself as a good compromise between Sanders and Clinton saying, “One of them’s too hot, one of them’s too cold, but I’ve got the right temperature.”

And:

On February 5, while talking to a Democratic voter in New Hampshire, the Ohio governor exclaimed, “I ought to be running in a Democrat primary. I got more Democrats for me — you have any Republican friends?”

Really!  This is what one wants to hear from a Republican self-avowing being a conservative?  To position themselves between a self-avowed Socialist (and as people dig, more a Communist than a Socialist) and a Saul Alinsky accolyte (also a Socialist, just more discrete about it)?  What kind of a Conservative is that?  And then John Jr. gets upset (H/T: another RedState) when Kasich is called on it?

“Just now on CNN, Kasich surrogate John Sununu, Jr. was asked about why conservatives do not like John Kasich. He started rattling off some talking points, then host Carol Costello dropped two separate RedState quotes on him. He didn’t seem to enjoy the experience very much.”

Let’s add this to the bonfire:

Ohio governor John Kasich says that his decision to go around the state legislature to expand Medicaid was nothing like President Obama’s abuse of executive authority. He was implementing the will of the legislature, he says, which was not to have to vote on the issue. They wanted the expansion to go through, but did not want to have to face a primary having voted that way. And the controlling board that ultimately made the decision, he went on to explain, is a democratic institution.

That last point is self-refuting: On Kasich’s own account, the point of this arrangement was to prevent accountability to primary voters by making legislative responsibility indirect. And that’s the basic problem with his answer, even if it turns out that he’s entirely right about what legislators were thinking (which I doubt). We shouldn’t care about presidential unilateralism because it offends the self-regard of legislators. We should care about it because it undermines our system of divided, checked, and accountable power. It doesn’t become better if the legislators agree to it because they would rather evade political accountability. For Kasich to say that as president he would unilaterally set policy only after consulting with legislators in this fashion should be the opposite of reassuring.

In this, how is Kasich any better than President “Pen and a Phone”?

 

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