Ohio Gov. Kasich, a pragmatic center-right Republican, may be plotting an independent presidential bid or a challenge to Trump for 2020 GOP Nomination
New York Magazine, 29 October 2017, John Kasich Is Already Running: For the Ohio governor, the campaign against Trump never stopped. And it won’t till 2020.
One year after his failed run at president, John Kasich is plotting his path to another, his third, for 2020.
You’ll remember Kasich from the last campaign, as his party caved to Donald Trump. At the Republican debates, he was the one at the farthest end of the stage — television Siberia — flapping his arms and shaking his head while making a case for himself as the voice of reason.
Kasich had staked out his place in the Republican landscape: “I think we need to be pro-environment. I think we need to be pro-immigrant — of course we need to protect our borders. I think we need to completely redo education. Every piece of education now is behind the times and a hundred years old. Look, I loved Ronald Reagan. I met Ronald Reagan. But Reagan was then. Now we gotta move on.” He came to his point: “I have a right to define what it means to be a conservative and what it means to be a Republican. I think my definition is a lot better than what the other people are doing.”
In Kasich’s view, the election of Trump and the complicity of party leaders represent a widespread abandonment of good American values — “a momentary lapse of reason,” he says.
Kasich, whose final term as governor ends in 2018, is still hawking that vision. He knows he faces a strategic imperative: He must dramatically expand his name recognition in this fallow period before the next race begins. “What I didn’t fully appreciate,” he writes in Two Paths, his account of the 2016 election that reads very much like a campaign book, “was how little known I was outside my home state of Ohio … It’s not that I wasn’t well known, I was learning. I wasn’t known at all, and that would turn out to be a major strike against us.”
But Kasich 2020 is not just a media proposition. Kasich is a sitting governor exploring a run against a president of his own party — a starkly unusual circumstance. He retains a skeletal campaign staff, and they are helping him to think through his options: Should he run as a Republican in the primaries or as an Independent in the general election? A primary run is plausible, strategists say, if Trump’s approval ratings among Republicans fall below the high 70s, where they’ve been, and Democrats prevail during the midterms, signaling a loosening of the stranglehold of the far-right base on the party. A third-party run is optimal if the major-party candidates represent ideological extremes. For more, please see hyperlink:
Will Kasich challenge Trump for nomination in 2020
or mount a third-party campaign?
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/10/john-kasich-2020-challenge-against-donald-trump.html
The Herald, 18 December 2017, Who can save the GOP?
The political carnage of the Alabama Senate race, in which Democrat Doug Jones upset President Donald Trump’s candidate, Roy Moore, in an ultra-GOP state, humiliated the president and has left the Grand Old Party badly in need of a credible old-time establishment leader to take him on. But none is in sight.
Trump, in openly campaigning for the loser, an accused sexual predator of young girls, has tarnished the once-respected party of Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Eisenhower and Reagan.
So have the current GOP congressional leaders, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan, in timidly embracing the Trump legislative agenda, including a widely disdained tax reform bill that would make the rich richer and practically everyone else poorer.
The 15 or so allegedly leading GOP presidential prospects who took on Trump in the 2016 party primaries folded like a deck of jokers then, leaving a barren stable of possible 2020 contenders. Of the bunch, only Gov. John Kasich of Ohio acquitted himself with a semblance of honor and plausible political or policy leadership and governing experience. For more, please see hyperlink:
Concord Monitor, 8 December 2017, Trump critic John Kasich eyes 2020 presidential run, talks future of GOP
“I think the foreign policy is kind of a mess right now. And we tend to be going it alone. We’ve become anti-trade,” Kasich said. “These are not the things that I think fly high for the Republican Party. It doesn’t really represent the party that I’ve strongly believed in in my lifetime.”
Kasich did come back in April, as part of a book tour. That stop fueled early speculation that Kasich was mulling another run for the White House. When it comes to 2020, Kasich said “everyone wants to know ‘what are you going to do.’ And I think nobody believes me when I tell them I do not know what I’m going to do.”
Whether he runs for president or not, Kasich says he’s got more to accomplish on his political to-do list.
“I still want to have a voice. I still have a political organization. I want to be able to participate in the national discussion and debate,” he said. “I just don’t know how that’s all going to work. We’ll see.” For more, please see hyperlink:
http://www.concordmonitor.com/John-Kasich-and-the-future-of-the-GOP-14225764
Gov. John Kasich delivers “two paths” speech in New York City
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVNxpqndQQg
Gov. John Kasich’s stands on the issues
https://www.johnkasich.com/jobsandeconomy/
https://www.johnkasich.com/liftingupamericans/
https://www.johnkasich.com/balancingbudgets/
https://www.johnkasich.com/nationalsecurity/
17 December 2017, Full Kasich: Republicans can’t be ‘small, angry and narrow’
JOHN KASICH FULL INTERVIEW WITH ANDERSON COOPER (12/14/2017)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3SZ5EW2O7M
12 November 2017, John Kasich on Roy Moore, Democrats and 2020 (Full interview)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-nnXDh2R-uM
Business Insider, 1 October 2017, John Kasich says he’ll leave the Republican party if it doesn’t fix itself
Ohio Gov. John Kasich on Sunday suggested he’ll stop supporting the Republican party if it can’t be fixed.
“If the party can’t be fixed, Jake, then I’m not going to be able to support the party,” Kasich told CNN’s Jake Tapper. “Period. That’s the end of it.”
The governor hedged significantly: He denied the potential of becoming an independent, but said he wanted to “straighten out” the GOP on issues like trade, debt, and immigration, where Kasich is to the left of President Donald Trump.
http://www.businessinsider.com/john-kasich-leaving-republican-party-if-doesnt-fix-itself-2017-10
John Kasich Presidential Campaign Announcement Full Speech (C-SPAN)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dg9q_inHH4M
John Kasich is from the Lincoln, TR, Ike, Reagan Wing of the GOP
Foreign Policy & Domestic Politics 