I‘m not a big fan of John Kasich. I have issues with him personally, politically, and policywise. Ted Cruz is by far more conservative, and he’s rock solid on the issues I care most about: abortion, religious liberty, and corporate welfare.
On Tuesday, however, I will walk to my polling place in Maryland’s D.C. suburbs and vote for John Kasich, because it is strategically the best way to hurt Donald Trump’s chances of winning the nomination.
For many reasons, I think a Trump nomination would be a disaster for conservatives — his near-certain loss in November, his lack of pro-life convictions, his lack of knowledge, humility, and self-control, to name three.
In the GOP nominating contest, no other candidate has the ability to win an outright majority of delegates, besides Trump. The only way to prevent a Trump nomination is to keep him below a majority — that is, below 1,237 delegates. Then in a contested convention, possibly a conservative and/or electable nominee could emerge.
So a delegate for Kasich is a delegate Trump doesn’t get. If you want Ted Cruz to be the nominee, or if you want anyone at least a little bit conservative, you may need to vote for Kasich, depending on where you live.
Maryland gives out its congressional districts two ways.
1. Statewide
Fourteen delegates go to the statewide winner. All public polls suggest this will be Trump, and it’s not close. So set these aside.
2. Congressional District
The winner of each of Maryland’s eight congressional districts gets 3 delegates. These are the delegates over which there is a real competition.
I live in Maryland’s 8th Congressional District. This district includes Silver Spring, Chevy Chase, and then it reaches all the way up to the outskirts of Frederick. (Thank you, partisan Democratic gerrymandering!) We have no good polling by congressional district, but the existing polling suggests that in my district, and in the other districts that reach into the D.C. suburbs, Kasich and Trump are the two top candidates in a potentially close contest.
Public Policy Polling’s poll suggests Kasich is winning the D.C. suburbs. In all likelihood, Trump is winning the rural parts of the district. Cruz is in third place in the district, the data suggest. Monmouth University’s poll is less helpful, but it suggests Trump and Kasich are the top two in our congressional district as well. These polls have only 300 Republican voters, and their sample in our district is less than 50 people, so it’s not reliable. This is guesswork, but the drips of data and the demographics of the districts suggest that Kasich has a much better chance to beat Trump than Cruz does.
So, in the tiny chance that my vote — and the votes of my neighbors who read and are convinced by this article — can deny Trump our district’s three delegates, I’ll vote for Kasich. Maybe those three delegates will make the difference between Trump getting to a majority of delegates or not. And maybe in a contested convention, the delegates will nominate a conservative candidate, who has a chance to beat Hillary.
I’m sure Ted Cruz’s feelings won’t be hurt by this. I still hope he wins the nomination. But in Montgomery County, Md., Kasich is the man who may beat Trump. So for Tuesday, Kasich gets my vote.
Timothy P. Carney, The Washington Examiner’s senior political columnist, can be contacted at [email protected]. His column appears Tuesday and Thursday nights on washingtonexaminer.com.
