Kasich, Portmand & The GOP's Political Class

Conservative Review ^ | 11 January, 2011 | Jeffrey Lord

[Shery]

News flash!

Senator from Ohio endorses Governor of Ohio for president! Extra! Extra! Read all about it!

In a snapshot, the story out there now that Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH) has endorsed Governor John Kasich for president tells you everything you need to know about why Donald Trump and Ted Cruz are leading the pack.

Here is the breathless headline from cincinnati.com:

Despite Bush ties, Rob Portman endorses John Kasich for president

The article opens this way:

U.S. Sen. Rob Portman has endorsed John Kasich for president, an unexpected move that reinforces the Ohio governor's strength in his home state.

‘Governor Kasich has done a great job leading Ohio's comeback, and I believe he is needed now to do the same for our country as the next President,’ Portman said in a statement. Portman's endorsement was not a given. In July, the Terrace Park Republican said he planned to stay out of the Republican presidential race, noting he had strong ties to several of the GOP candidates. Portman is particularly close to the family of Jeb Bush. He ran the White House Office of Legislative Affairs under President George H. W. Bush and served as U.S. trade representative and budget chief under President George W. Bush. ‘I am someone who owes a lot to George H.W. Bush, who got me involved in this business in the first place and has been a mentor of mine,’ Portman told The Enquirer in July. ‘And of course I'm close to George W. Bush because I worked for him as well.’ It's not clear what made Portman decide to back Kasich. But having Portman in the Kasich fold will lend more credence to the notion that Ohio is Kasich territory. The governor received an unusual early endorsement Friday from the Ohio Republican Party…”

If the proverbial Martian had landed and was asked to diagnose the problem with the Republican Party, that story would tell the Martian everything he needed to know.

Bluntly put? Who cares about this? Can you imagine Mr. and Mrs. America out there seeing this on the news over the morning coffee and saying: “Mildred, I had no idea Rob Portman was Bush 41’s guy running the White House office of Legislative Affairs, but now that I do that seals it. I’m for Kasich!”

Right.

Over at SteynOnline, the inimitable Mark Steyn, a New Hampshire resident, describes attending the recent Trump rally in the very heart of Bernie land—nearby Burlington, Vermont where the now socialist senator and presidential candidate once reigned as mayor. There was a “carnival atmosphere,” Steyn writes in a post titled, “Notes on a Phenomenon,” with “thousands” of Trump supporters waiting to get in to the Flynn Theater, which was packed. Outside were hundreds of protestors baying and bellowing about everything from “Black Lives Matter” to social justice to “Trump is a fascist.”

Average Americans realize that not sticking with principle can have very real-time negative effects on their own lives.

Steyn works his way through every sight and sound—and it quickly becomes apparent that everybody from the candidate to the last Trump supporter in the packed house was having a rip-roaring damn fine time. They laughed, they cheered, they hollered. There was music (from Trump Tower resident Andrew Lloyd Weber’s Phantom of the Opera” to fellow Trump Tower resident Sir Elton John’s “Tiny Dancer” and “Rocket Man”) and substance (immigration, economics, trade). And, as mentioned, Steyn notes that “everyone's laughing and having a ball.”

Now. Contrast this with the big “news” that the Senator from Ohio has endorsed the Governor of Ohio. Any mentions of crowds? A “carnival atmosphere” with cheering, laughing thousands as Rob Portman moves from the Bushes to Kasich? No, of course not.

Why might this be?

For that move on to this column at Fox News by Brent Bozell of the Media research Center and NewsBusters fame. Bozell heads his column with this headline:

The GOP establishment has ruined the Republican brand

Bozell begins thusly:

In Politico Tuesday, Republican elites warned that if Donald Trump or Ted Cruz become the nominee it would ruin the Republican brand. How's that for party unity and loyalty? More to the point: What brand? The GOP brand is already ruined. And they ruined it. Bozell goes on in detail to list in succinct fashion just where the GOP has gotten off track: The massive explosion of the federal government under Bush 43, the abandonment of issues ranging from family values to national security.

How did this happen? How did we get here? Because the GOP long ago abandoned principle, leaving the party in the hands of, to quote Pat Buchanan, “elites, collectives of officeholders past and present, donors, lobbyists, think-tankers angling for jobs, party hacks and talking heads.”

And in the world Pat Buchanan describes, one member of the political class—Portman—endorsing another—Kasich—is thought of as a Big Deal. But in the world that Mark Steyn was observing the other night in Burlington, a world inhabited by Trump and Cruz supporters, not only is the Portman-endorses-Kasich story irrelevant, it symbolizes exactly what has gone wrong with the GOP since Reagan’s departure all the way back in 1989—some 27 years ago.

The GOP Establishment loves to disdain talk radio. They grit their teeth when the subject of Rush or Sean or Mark or Laura, etc. comes up. One can only marvel at the lack of basic understanding these elites have with this informational segment of the GOP base. Talk radio isn’t really just “talk.” Perhaps it should be called “talk and listen” radio. Or, yes indeed, “Reagan Radio.” Why? Because these hosts are in the business of principle—conservative principle. While each of the aforementioned has the inevitable difference in styles, all have contributed to those long lines at Trump rallies and the enthusiasts flooding the Cruz campaign.

How? By talking principle—and doing so endlessly. By engaging with their audience, by the constant back-and-forth discussion of conservative principle and how to apply it in news event A, B or C.

Mark Levin has had one best seller after another discussing the Constitution (and most recently the deficit). This is not an irrelevant fact. It’s not as if he were writing a series of romance novels, for heaven’s sake. These are extremely thoughtful, seriously purposeful examinations at the issues of the day through the founding document of America. And the very fact of their “best seller” status should have told the GOP Establishment that Americans—conservatives in particular—were listening. Paying attention. When Laura Ingraham swoops in to Eric Cantor’s congressional district it isn’t her celebrity that helps defeat the House GOP Majority Leader—it’s the principles she has been discussing that matter.

Why does Sean Hannity sail along in his radio and TV ratings? Perhaps even more to the point, why that stunningly crazy piece in Newsweek a few years back? The one in which Rush was placed on the cover with a piece of tape over his mouth and the headline screaming Enough! with ex-Bush 43 aide David Frum penning a lengthy screed about how much of a liability Rush had become to the GOP.

What is going on here is a massive disconnect between the elites and Mr. and Mrs. Joe and Josie America, a breech with those Pat Buchanan describes above—the “elites, collectives of officeholders past and present, donors, lobbyists, think-tankers angling for jobs, party hacks and talking heads.” This is a crowd primarily dominated by financial interest—how much is my support worth in the bank?—not by principle. And alas for these folks, the base of the party has not only caught on, but caught up. Average Americans realize that not sticking with principle can have very real-time negative effects on their own lives.

One suspects, for example, that Jamiel Shaw Sr.—the African-American Los Angeles resident—never gave much thought to the principles behind immigration policy until his 17-year old son Jamiel—a star athlete and high school scholar who was already getting calls from Stanford and Rutgers—was lying dead on the sidewalk almost in front of the Shaw family home. With Jamiel the younger shot execution-style by an illegal immigrant gang member.

Now? Now Mr. Shaw is out there as a Trump supporter. One could doubtless listen to Cruz supporters and find among their enthusiastic ranks some version of the same story. It is reasonable to suspect they could not possibly care about the Portman endorsement of Kasich—the utterly typical message of one member of the political class scratching the back of another.

Is there a lesson in all this? Yes there is. The Portman-is-for-Kasich story is utterly typical of just how far off course the Republican Party leadership has taken the party, while refusing to stand up and fight on everything from, as Brent Bozell so cogently lists, limited government to family values to military and national security policy.

Is it too late for the Establishment? Yes, as they already sense—and are about to find out in excruciating detail.

Jeffrey Lord is a former Reagan White House political director, author and CNN commentator. He writes from Pennsylvania at jlpa1@aol.com

[Shery]

I wonder what the GOPe will do when Trump or Cruz wins the nomination. Pull another Chris McDaniel and pay for adds to get the disaffected GOP to vote democrat? That is how they do it. They will never support a conservative, but they insist we support them. This election very well could divide the republican party. I'd like to see THEm be forced to form a party since they have cooped the true republican standards.

[Opinionated Blowhard]

John Kasich has been a huge disappointment for me. He has probably the best resume of any candidate being budget chairman under Gingrich, a key architect of the 90s revolution and then governor of a swing state. But something happened to him in within the past decade to turn him into a RINO who, like other Establishment types, is more interested in slamming conservatives than promoting conservative ideas. Its such a disappointment. He could have been leading the field right now if he had continued to advance a conservative agenda.

[Shery]

Yes, I agree. It is sad to see such promising people turn into the establishment. The PC culture effects nearly everyone unless you understand it and fight it. Few do.

[Ninaq]

Absolutely!
Something did happen to Kasich along the way, some of it being his ego.
The endorsement of one establishment person to another should be the kind of message one should hide.
Portman will have his own trouble here in Ohio.

[chae]

I’m thinking it has something to do with the FBI files the Clintons had.
Remember, Kasich was really tight with Gary Condit.

[MasterGunner01]

WHO CARES IF PORTMAN ENDORSES KASICH?