Kasich has signed every one of a series of anti-choice measures that has ever reached his desk.
Yeah, being pro-life doesn't make one an extremist, nor does acting like. Not even just because "
it's the current year". I also remember these people called
pro-life Democrats. I even think they're still a few left!
Across the state he has made an enemy of public sector unions
A Republican who
didn't make an enemy of public sector unions would be a poor Republican indeed. This is just as much the case today as it was in 1916 or 1956.
enthusiastic support for oil and gas production via fracking – even though that has not brought as much prosperity to the state as some think.
It's interesting, how fracking in Ohio is either seen as accounting entirely for the state's economic performance under Kasich or, as we see here, as a net negative with little beneficial effects. Either way, Kasich gets to be the bad guy!
“He is a climate change denier..."
, unlike his rivals,
who actually are:
Patently false, then, unless your definition of "climate change denial" entails supporting the reduction of emissions in a gradual and sustained manner rather than peddling a fantastical vision of reducing emissions by four-fifths in just three decades and shutting down the fossil fuel industry without correspondingly large drops in the standard of living, destroying the economies of large swathes of the country, massive increases in energy prices, making the US more dependent on noxious regimes in the Middle East... Yes! How
dare Kasich not support innumerate proposals to meet our energy needs with solar and wind power alone? How dare he not oppose
very dangerous nuclear power and large-scale hydropower like any
left-wing progressive reasonable moderate?
We have a terrible infant mortality rate for African American babies – I could go on.
African American infant mortality-- that's just the sort of thing an NPR-listening,
The Nation-reading identity politics-interested progressive would care about and a heartless corporatist extremist like Kasich would completely ignore, right?
Wrong:
Now, you'll have to wade through
the left-wing smear that Kasich "blames black people for high infant mortality rates" and read what Kasich actually said. Keep in mind that he brought infant mortality up unprompted-- I know this for a fact, because I was there. If you read closely at the criticism, you'll find what this is really about: it's not infant mortality,
it's about Planned Parenthood, which has a program targeting at-risk women during their pregnancies. “It is offensive to hear John Kasich tell black women what we should do with our bodies," says the assistant director of constituency communications for the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, the irony of linking infant mortality to abortion apparently lost on her.
But once again the facts are on Kasich's side-- $1.3 million of state funding to Planned Parenthood was cut (and redirected to other community organizations), but $15 million is going to such organizations to combat infant mortality in at-risk (read: poor read: black) areas
through a program in Kasich's budget last year. Planned Parenthood's program worked with 2,800 women, while Kasich's works with 300,000. The year before that,
Kasich launched a $4.2 million campaign to help drug-addicted pregnant mothers break their habit and help care for their children.
So
obviously the callous poor-hating racist Kasich simply doesn't care about infant mortality. Once again, people are
foolish enough to think otherwise just because $15 million>$1.3 million and 300,000>2,800, when they should know that the only
important thing is that he redirected funds away from Planned Parenthood. And empowering alternatives to Planned Parenthood is pure evil, women's health be damned-- just ask any
left-wing progressive reasonable moderate
what they think about crisis pregnancy centers.
“The people in Ohio who know him are stunned that he has been allowed to get away with calling himself a moderate,” said Sandy Theis, executive director of the liberal thinktank Progress Ohio. [...] "Maybe the middle has moved so far to the right that there is no genuine moderate in the Republican race anymore."
See, I think this exposes the contradictions of such criticism of Kasich rather well. You, along with the "director of a liberal think tank", HuffPo, Rolling Stone, Samantha Bee, etc, etc don't
want a moderate. You want a liberal progressive. If Kasich were to conform to all your conditions for "non-extremism", he would be a left-wing progressive. It is perfectly fine to want a left-wing progressive. But it is disingenuous to wring your hands about how a candidate isn't a "reasonable moderate" when you have
no actual desire for one.
