Ohio Gov. John Kasich’s recent comments suggesting President Obama’s healthcare law was here to stay and having a positive impact on people’s lives generated a lot of attention as marking a potential shift in Republican attitudes toward the program. But the fact that he has since pushed back on the story suggests he’s seriously thinking about a run for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination.
On Monday, the Associated Press ran a (since-modified) story quoting Kasich as saying of repealing Obamacare, “That’s not gonna happen.” He added that opposition “was really either political or ideological” and that “I don’t think that holds water against real flesh and blood and real improvements in people’s lives.”
His comments echoed the arguments of liberals, who like to belittle opposition to the healthcare law and talk about all of the ways it’s benefitting individuals rather than the offsetting costs.
Kasich, an enthusiastic backer of the law’s Medicaid expansion, has consistently tried to hold the dishonest position that supporting one of the key components of Obamacare was somehow consistent with opposing Obamacare, an untenable distinction I slammed him for last year. But what generated headlines this time was that, as originally quoted by the AP, he appeared to be breaking from his long-held dishonest effectively-pro-Obamacare position into an openly-pro-Obamacare position. One of my first thoughts after reading his initial comments was that he cannot be serious about running for president in 2016, because there’s no way he could win a primary with such a stance.
However, Kasich subsequently took to Twitter to reiterate that, no, he really meant to continue being dishonest about Obamacare and the AP misquoted him by suggesting he now wanted to be open about his support for the law.
“The AP got it wrong,” Kasich tweeted. “Ohio said NO to the Obamacare exchange for a reason. As always, my position is that we need to repeal and replace.”
He later added, “Spent my night talking to the NYT, WSJ & Politico. Why? Because the AP screwed up. Let me make my position simple. Repeal Obamacare.”
The AP ended up revising its story to say that Kasich was talking about the Medicaid expansion, not all of Obamacare, in his original comments.
But conservatives shouldn’t give Kasich a cookie for not setting up a state-based exchange, because all that means is that Ohioans can obtain Obamacare through the federal Healthcare.gov website (unless that changes due to current litigation).
The real chance for Republican governors to stand up for limited-government principles was to reject the money coming from Washington to expand the fully government-run Medicaid program. And Kasich embraced the big government position and has defended it strenuously. If he actually supports repeal, it would mean getting rid of the expansion of Medicaid that he still holds is making “real flesh and blood and real improvements in people’s lives.”
Kasich is currently cruising to reelection, so his aggressive pushback on the idea that he’s pro-Obamacare suggests he may very well have GOP presidential primary voters on his mind.
