Kasich Campaign Press Release - Op-Ed: Can Kasich Save the GOP?

The Baltimore Sun
Jules Witcover

March 21, 2016

As establishment Republicans look to an elusive stop-Trump effort to salvage their party from self-destruction, circumstances have suddenly handed them their best and perhaps only viable vehicle in Gov. John Kasich of Ohio.

The twice-elected governor and former 18-year congressman, after months of obscurity among the pack of 17 GOP presidential candidates, has emerged after beating Mr. Trump in the Ohio primary as one of only two barriers to the New Yorker's nomination.

With Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, an unvarnished tea party conservative deeply despised in the Senate as the alternative, Mr. Kasich as a more moderate conservative is the establishment's more acceptable hope to avoid the Trump takeover.

His impressive legislative record as a budget-balancer and deficit hawk in Congress, replicated in Columbus, offers a sharp contrast to Mr. Trump's total inexperience in government at any level, and he offers the additional virtue of being a positive and unifying campaigner.

While many of the other GOP contenders for the White House have joined the mud-slinging and name-calling of Mr. Trump, Mr. Kasich has conspicuously abstained. The worst he has said so far has been to observe the front runner has created "a toxic environment" in the campaign that has not served the party well.

In assuring fellow Republicans that he will "not take the low road to seek the highest office in the land," Mr. Kasich has intentionally pushed back against the Trump phenomenon, and is offering a sharp stylistic and temperamental contrast to the reckless and demagogic New York business tycoon and snake-oil salesman.

Known in Congress as a sharp-tongued and argumentative partisan, the former House Budget Committee chairman as governor has adopted a much more personable and conciliatory manner, touting party unity and willingness to work across the partisan aisle.

All this makes Mr. Kasich potentially an effective vehicle for persuading fellow Republicans to reflect on their party's long engagement in the two-party system, which functioned reasonably well before its recent engagement in blind obstruction in Washington.

Read the full column here.