-------- The War on Poverty: $22 Trillion and counting.....
Posted on 03/26/2015 1:25:55 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
“I am a servant of the Lord. I am a servant of the Lord. He has opened doors all of my life. The Lord has. He has pushed me over the mountain this time. I don’t know why, but I have no doubt that he has.”
Ted Cruz could not have said it better during the official launch of his presidential campaign on Monday. He could not have said it at all, in fact, because uttering those words would have made him guilty of plagiarism. They were spoken by Ohio Gov. John Kasich during his first inaugural address in 2011.
Kasich grew up Catholic in Pennsylvania. Childhood friends nicknamed him “Pope” to mock his fervent desire to enter the priesthood. But the vow of celibacy turned him toward Ohio State University. In 1982, he was the only Republican challenger to beat a Democratic incumbent for a seat in Congress. Five years later, his parents were killed by a drunk driver, and Kasich renewed his relationship with God.
He started a Bible study group in Columbus, which became the subject of his third book, “Every Other Monday: Twenty Years of Life, Love, Faith, and Friendship.”
Ted Cruz and Scott Walker have become targets of the secular Left for talking openly about their faith, but Kasich is the one who has based policies upon his religious views — and done so publicly.
The governor has said repeatedly that his approach to social services is driven by his faith. Yet the Left leaves him alone because Kasich cites his faith as the reason for increasing spending on social services.
He has famously embraced Medicaid expansion under Obamacare. Asked why, he told The Washington Post’s Dan Balz, “Faith is important to me. If you go through the Old and New testaments, there’s one thing that’s very clear. You’ve got to help people that are downtrodden and poor, and I just think that that’s part of our culture. You’ve got to help people that can’t help themselves.”
In an interview on Tuesday, Kasich added a fiscal justification. He wanted Ohio to claim the Medicaid money it had sent to Washington in the first place. “They’re not somebody else’s dollars; they’re my dollars. And when I bring them back, I can help my folks.”
Helping his folks is a religious obligation, he said.
“Now why do I think we should help people? Let me tell you where I’m coming from on that. There’s a book, as you know, it’s got two parts: an old part and a new part. You can’t read it without being struck by the notion that we have an obligation to help the least among us.”
Asked whether “we” meant individuals or the government, Kasich said the private sector cannot do it alone.
“I would love to think that we could do it all ourselves, but I can tell you we can’t. If I go to churches and synagogues and say, ‘Can you handle all the poor; can you handle all the disabled,’ they will tell you that they cannot. So is there a proper role for government to partner with them? Yes.”
The problem, he said, is that “when it (government) gets too big, people think it’s no longer their responsibility to engage in their communities.”
Government, Kasich believes, should share the burden of caring for the poor and the needy, but it also should prime the social welfare pump.
Last year, the Kasich administration launched a mentoring initiative in which the state offered $10 million in grant money to non-profits and “faith-based organizations” to “kick-start,” in his words, private youth mentoring services.
“If I don’t do this, if I say to the private sector, ‘well, just go out and mentor all these kids,’ it’s not happening. Now I can stand on ideological ground, but it isn’t going to solve the problem I have.”
Politically, the problem Kasich has might come from the way he addresses the policy problems he has. Among the most active members of the Republican base, “compassionate conservatism” is about as popular as Medicaid expansion. Kasich embraces both. To a party trending libertarian to cleanse itself of George W. Bush’s big-government Republicanism, Kasich speaks in language as outdated as a Creed single. That semi-Christian post-Grunge band enjoyed widespread popularity just as Bush rose to the presidency. Then tastes changed.
Kasich’s message might have broader appeal in a general election. Two-thirds of Americans say the government has a moral duty to narrow the gap between the rich and poor, according to the Pew Research Center. But after both Bush and President Obama used faith to justify a more active federal government, Republican primary voters are not a receptive audience for that message.
Andrew Cline is editorial page editor of the New Hampshire Union Leader. His column runs on Thursdays. You can follow him on Twitter @Drewhampshire.
Kasich is a non-starter. He went to DC and he didn’t change it, it changed him. He’s another unimpressive RINO in the tradition of ex-Gov. Bob Taft the Turd.
“Special Report with Brit Hume” on Fox News Channel did a short profile on Kasich and his visit to New Hampshire.
He did look appealing, I must say.
Plus, he’d be a few months short of 65 in Jan 2017. We need younger blood, not old RINOs like Kasich that have been in office since the 1970s.
He’s not my fav, but is that bad?
He spoiled somewhere in the ‘90s. Turned out a total phony in Columbus:
Kasich ain’t gonna change squat in DC. He’s already a part of the problem.
I’ve mentioned several times before that I grew up with John. He is a nice guy away from Washington, but we don’t need another socialist in the White House.
As the article states, John was a Catholic and the church has always been somewhat socialist with regard to the poor. That socialism is accelerating under Pope Francis. It’s one thing to lend a helping hand to those truly in need, but I don’t think it’s right to bankrupt working people so a bunch of slackers can get their free stuff. I don’t think the Pope quite gets that.
If he shows one face to you and another face to his RINO buddies, I would say he might have been like that all of his life to some degree.
When I said John’s a nice guy, I didn’t mean he was conservative to me and liberal to his Washington friends. I just meant that in social situations, he’s a normal guy. I think his politics are the same no matter where he is.
One thing I should have mentioned is that in Pennsylvania Republicans are generally not conservative. So John is kind of par for the course for Republicans originally from this state.
The RINO establishment is working desperately to run one of their own for President AGAIN. BUSH has no traction, Christie is finished, Romney pulled out and McCain is too old.
So now they are pushing Kasich. Expect Portman next.
Portman will be in his sixties as well. His notorious switch to support gay marriage is toxic with the base. He also has to run for reelection to the Senate in ‘16. I hope he quits or is primaried. I expect the establishment will pimp Rubio, another ex-Conservative who went native before the ink on his election certificate was dry.
Maybe if Hillary is kicked to the curb, she can switch back to being a Republican and run in the GOP Primary.
Ya think?
Wow, religious left BS, that’s a turn off.
Heh. And we’d have some R-bot FReepers demanding we MUST support her because she’s “not a Democrat.”
Hey, it makes JOHN feel good about himself. Doesn’t matter we’re headed to $20 trillion in debt.
I have a novel idea for improving health care for all, get government the HELL out of it and introduce something called “competition.” Costs go down, quality goes up. But, naah, best to let the gubmint handle it, costs skyrocket and quality goes in the toilet. Such is what happens every time that institution touches ANYTHING in the private sector.
Fox is on board the Cheap Labor Express. They are helping the RNC deliver an amnesty candidate
I’m acutely aware of Pennsylvania RINOs. They’re turning the state into an extra-sized New Jersey.
Once he started saying it was our Christian duty to support higher Welfare and Food Stamp payments, I stopped listening to him. Its a shame. At one point, a long time ago, he at least appeared to be a solid fiscal conservative.
Ohio Ping
Gov. John Kasich – Ohio’s Own Obama?
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3111567/posts
Quote:
Ohio’s legislature – lobbied by grassroots groups the press acknowledges only to sneer at – stripped Medicaid expansion from the state budget and even passed language explicitly forbidding it. Kasich responded by line-item vetoing the Medicaid expansion ban, and then unilaterally expanding Medicaid when several more months of emotional blackmail didn’t work.
The legislature wouldn’t grow government the way Kasich wanted, so Kasich took a page from Obama’s playbook and pretended the huge policy decision was an executive matter.
Good thing this is coming out. Otherwise I’d have to use my ‘toldyaso’.
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