Dan Balz at the Washington Post reports that John Kasich has hired John Weaver and Fred Davis to be his campaign consultants, strategists, pillagers of his bank account, and all around agents of a pseudo-Presidential campaign.

Kasich has, no doubt, looked in the mirror every day since he left Fox News calling himself “Mr. President.” But Kasich is not now running to be President. Surely, like the gorilla putting on a lion’s mane and calling himself Aslan, Kasich will put on the Brooks Brothers tie and call himself a presidential candidate, but that does not make him a White House contender.

One does not hire the Republican equivalent of Bob Shrum (see e.g. Presidents Gephardt, Dukaksis, Kerrey, Gore, and Kerry) — advisors to a host of “former Presidential candidates” including McCain and Huntsman — to be President. One hires them to knife other candidates in the back.

John Kasich does not want to be President. He wants to be the guy who scuttles the chances of other candidates. In 2012, Jon Huntsman set out destroying a host of candidates we now know from several books written. It was, for example, reportedly the Huntsman campaign that push the stories about Herman Cain as he continued to rise in the polls.

Kasich has a frosty relationship with Scott Walker. He is no fan of [mc_name name=’Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX)’ chamber=’senate’ mcid=’C001098′ ] or [mc_name name=’Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY)’ chamber=’senate’ mcid=’P000603′ ]. He is not a great ally to Rick Perry. It doesn’t take much to see Kasich as the guy trying to get on stage at a debate not to build himself up, but take out others, hoping to eventually be rewarded by the next President.

Put more bluntly, one does not run for President in the Republican Party by hiring consultants who hate the Republican base to run the campaign of a Republican who says publicly Jesus wants him to expand government. One runs that way to destroy others within the primary process.

The only thing John Weaver and Fred Davis have excelled at of late is making money off failures running for office. The only thing Kasich has excelled at in the press is attacking other Republicans claiming Jesus and St. Peter will send them all to hell unless they too embrace Obamacare.

This isn’t a Presidential campaign, it is John Wilkes Booth acting on a debate stage until he can take out another Republican. Metaphorically speaking, of course.