Monday, May 4, 2015

John Kasich has come down with a full-blown case of Reasonable Gentleman Syndrome

The Ohio governor blusters to NPR that the Medicaid expansion money is "Ohio's money" and that Ronald Reagan expanded Medicaid.

Paula Bolyard at PJ Media gives him a cold splash of reality:

In media appearances Kasich has repeated — over and over again — that Medicaid expansion brings “Ohio money” back to Ohio, as if there’s a special pot of unclaimed “Ohio money” just sitting in Washington waiting for a savvy governor to claim it. Now he’s taken that false claim to a new level by arrogantly boasting, “It’s my money.” The truth? Medicaid expansion is paid for with new federal spending from a government that is $18 trillion in debt. If those Kasich apologists at Fox News (who seem to be giving him more air time than Karl Rove these days) could stop swooning over the Republican moderate for just a few minutes, perhaps they’d ask Mr. “I-was-in-the-Tea-party-before-there-was-a-Tea-party” about these contradictions in his narrative. I’m not holding my breath.
And while we’re on the subject of falsehoods, let’s just dispel with this notion that Kasich is “just like Ronald Reagan” because they both expanded Medicaid. Hogwash. Reagan gave states the option of expanding Medicaid to include pregnant women and children and didn’t coerce states into signing up with the perverse economic incentives included with Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion. Reagan’s former chief of staff Edwin Meese III wrote at National Review that the expansion was about a lot more than just adding people to the welfare rolls:
In an era when there were perpetual fights over using public funds for abortion, the expansion assured that pregnant women would not be financially worse off carrying their children to term than they would be if they chose to have an abortion.
In contrast, Kasich’s new budget re-prioritizes Medicaid spending, removing pregnant women at the top end of the federal poverty level (FPL) from the rolls. Programs now available to women at 200 percent of the FPL will only be offered to women at or below 138 percent of the FPL. Those in the gap will be told to sign up for Obamacare.
What say you, Guv?

12 comments:

  1. When the robots come , oh well....

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  2. Anyhow, what do the people of the Great State of Ohio want? Kasich isn't just the governor of the conservatives of the Great State of Ohio.

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  3. "Election day: Less than 10 percent of eligible voters turned out for yesterday’s primary election. In Columbus, City Council President Andrew J. Ginther, a Democrat, got nearly 52 percent of the vote in the nonpartisan mayoral primary. He’ll now face Franklin County Sheriff Zach Scott, also a Democrat, in the November race, who had just 147 votes on Republican Terry Boyd, Dispatch reporter Lucas Sullivan reports."

    Read more at http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2015/05/06/ohio-politics-now-cliff-rosenberger-talks-marijuana-same-sex-marriage-taxes.html

    I guess what this means is I don't know what it means, except a lot of the usual voter apathy, as usual, during a primary. So, who knows whether Kasich is serving the will of the people or not.

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  4. I'm not so interested in whether he's serving some kind of ephemeral "will of the people" as I am whether he's deviating to a disturbing degree from conservative principles.

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  5. Of course, I understand. I read your views in the Republic this morning. How'd that work out for the current incumbent mayor? She held her "sturdy" ground and pissed off nearly everybody who was not with her nearly from the get-go. Heil!

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  6. She's far from a consistent conservative. I lover her to death, personality quirks and all, but she is not a classic three-pillared righty.

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  7. My point is that you have to be reasonable and go along sometimes to get reelected. We all know her history of stirring somethings up and that does not generally go well whether you are in a small town or in the Big City, even DC. Have you ever seen such dissension in City Hall in our little

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  8. Never. I found it quite bracing.

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  9. Evidently even local Republicans did not find it so, 2 to 1. I won't say I didn't tall you so. Dems are really down in town now, though. But I'm guessing that, like me and my wife, there are many there amongst them that found her behaviour and actions quite distasteful. She's gow aw aw aw aw aw wooe oh woe gone. I won't go as far as singing a little ding dong.song....

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  10. You're a funny guy, loving dissension. How blessed....

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