Ohio Gov. John Kasich stayed on the more moderate side of the GOP campaign trail Sunday morning, expressing distaste for shutting down the government over trying to defund Planned Parenthood and urging against rash promises to rip up the Iran deal.
Kasich was notably careful, like his fellow Republicans, to criticize the women’s health and abortion provider, saying it shouldn’t get any government money.
But refusing to pass a government funding bill unless it strips funds from Planned Parenthood, as some House conservatives are threatening to do, would result in little positive outcome, as President Obama has vowed to veto such a measure, Kasich, who ranks eighth in the Washington Examiner‘s presidential power rankings, said.
Instead of pushing for a fight it’ll ultimately lose, Congress should come up with “more creative” ways to undermine Planned Parenthood, according to Kasich.
“You shouldn’t shut the government down unless you have a good chance of success,” Kasich told Chris Wallace on “Fox News Sunday.”
Kasich, who supported a government shutdown in the 1990s, drew a distinction between that situation, in which Republicans ultimately got some concessions from Democrats on spending cuts, and what might happen now. “We had a pretty good sense that if we stood our ground back then we could actually move a balanced budget forward,” Kasich said.
Kasich, who is trailing behind many of his Republican rivals in national polls but has risen to second-place in the early battleground state of New Hampshire, has often taken among the most moderate positions in the field.
Many of Kasich’s rivals for the presidential nomination have vowed they’d rip up the Iran deal should they win the White House next year. But like his approach to defunding Planned Parenthood, Kasich expressed a similar note of caution over responding to President Obama’s deal to keep Iran from developing nuclear weapons.
“We don’t know what’s going to happen in 18 months,” said Kasich, who served on the U.S. House Armed Services Committee for 18 years.
“You’ve gotta be careful not to paint red lines … if we get to the point that we think Iran might be developing a nuclear weapon, then I think military action should be warranted,” he added. “But let’s wait till we get there and stay calm because that’s the most important thing we can do when it comes to our foreign affairs.”
