We can be eternally grateful we didn't get John Kasich as president

There was a time when the guy was considered a solid conservative. In 2016, he obliterated that notion to smithereens - right up to the present moment:

On December 27, 2016, Ohio Governor John Kasich vetoed House Bill 554, an energy bill designed to ease state restrictions on electric utilities. Currently, power companies in Ohio must meet increasingly strict annual standards for investing in renewable energy, such as solar, wind, etc., and for helping customers reduce energy use.

Environmental special interest groups are ecstatic over Kasich’s energy bill veto. They probably especially like the part where the state tells utility companies they have to fund their own suicide by showing customers how to use less of their services or products, a bad habit government is increasingly applying across many industries. Nevertheless, Kasich justified the veto by claiming it would have weakened the state's clean-energy standards, which in turn would have hurt the state’s near and long-term economic competitiveness.

The energy bill veto was joined by Kasich’s veto of Senate Bill 329, a bill that would have set up a process for lawmakers to regularly review certain state agencies for possible elimination. Kasich said Senate Bill 329 needlessly duplicates an aspect of the budget process.

When governments promote “clean” or “renewable” energy bills, you get neither the economic competitiveness of a free market or smaller government. And simply relying on the budget process to rein in government has little basis in history. Thus, Kasich’s reasoning for his vetoes falls under Orwellian logic, somewhere along the lines of “Ignorance is Strength.”

There's nothing surprising about this now, given his pronouncements about Medicaid expansion ("I'm sure when I get to the pearly gates they're gonna be less interested in what I did to shrink government than in what I did for my fellow man") and government coercing Christian wedding service providers to take the business of homosexual couples ("It's a done deal now. If it bothers you, say a little prayer for 'em on their way out the door.")