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.
I can not fault Kasich for doing the Medicaid expansion: we Ohio residents send a lot of tax dollars to Washington, and without Ohio expanding Medicaid, we would not get THOSE dollars back, they would be given instead to other states who DID follow the Federal mandate to expand. You can thank the formerly Dim - controlled Congress for THAT!
I also think there is a proviso in the current Ohio Medicaid expansion that ends it if the Feds fail to pony up the lion's share as promised...
That seems like a prudent, responsible decision to ME?
Also can't fault Kasich for agreeing with Reagan's comment about the truly needy...there are such people, and I'd rather let Kasich and our state agencies decide who they are here in Ohio than let the federal HHS do it, or send our money to California or someplace...
BTW, thanks for the ping! ; )
The process is important.
Your points are valid. Why couldn’t Kasich have made his points to the legislature?? And in the process win them over to his point of view?
What he did was not right - he skipped legislative process and went to a council (executive fiat) to get Medicaid in Ohio. We do NOT need someone in the oval office that erodes legislative process and rules by executive fiat.
AKA, "how to win friends and influence people" (who said that?), LOL!
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