“Swing Easy” is Columbus Underground’s ongoing series about the 2016 senate and presidential elections as experienced by America’s most important swing state.
If You Don’t Have Anything Nice to Say
Former Florida Governor and expected presidential candidate Jeb Bush was in Columbus last Tuesday, where he told what might be the first big lie of the 2016 campaign. Bush was the keynote speaker at the annual meeting of the Ohio Chamber of Commerce and while in town, reporters asked him about another Florida politician, Marco Rubio, who has just officially joined the 2016 race.
According to The Washington Post, Bush told reporters he cares about the junior senator from Florida and considers him a friend. He then went so far as to say, “I am his friend and he’s mine and I’m never going to disparage him.”
While it is genuinely touching that Bush would issue an early blanket refusal to disparage his friend and potential opponent (Rubio would later reaffirmed their closeness to NPR), but declaring that he’ll never disparage Rubio may have been unwise. If any anti-Rubio ads come out of a Bush campaign, he’ll be called a liar (and a pretty rotten friend). A Bush-supporting super PAC might be able to get away with it, but voters have seen through the “unaffiliated” nature of super PACs before.
Of course, if Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, (presumably) John Kasich, or any other candidates in the GOP primary field prove to be heavier hitters, Bush and Rubio may have bigger fish to fry than each other.
Remember fellas, presidents come and go, but friendship is forever.
Everybody Loves Kasich
As John Kasich continues his march toward a presidential run, two prominent political media outlets are singing the praises of Ohio’s governor. Nate Silver, the sports statistician who correctly prophesized the 2012 presidential election, wrote on his website that if Kasich overcomes his name recognition problem, he could be “the most electable representative of the moderate wing of the Republican Party.” Meanwhile, Politico argued that, “Obamacare-loving moderate John Kasich may be the Republican Party’s best bet.”
Ohio liberals will likely bristle at the description of Kasich as a moderate, and “Obamacare-loving” seems like a stretch, but in Silver’s analysis Kasich “has a relatively moderate track record” which puts him somewhere between Jeb Bush and Mitt Romney.
Both of these articles, and much of the national buzz surrounding John Kasich, hinge on the assumption that Republican primary voters actually want a moderate candidate. While it’s true that Republicans generally prefer electability over conservative purity in their nominees, the last “electable” moderate they sent to battle for the White House in 2012 spent much of his campaign distancing himself from his relatively moderate-to-liberal policies as governor of Massachusetts.
Kasich’s fate in the primaries will almost certainly be tied to how voters react to his moderate reputation.
And because no one can have enough John Kasich…
…we now have Lego John Kasich. Behold, citizens; @LegoJohnKasich. The plastic version of our Governor is permanently scowling, a fan of all-caps and definitely running for president. He’s even gotten into some rage spirals with Lego Hillary Clinton, which is also a thing.
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