If there’s anything that has defined John Kasich on the campaign trail this year, it has been his nearly constant invocation of God Almighty to bolster his unpopular policy positions. By far the most popular reason for John Kasich to invoke God has been to defend his unilateral Medicaid expansion, which indefensible as a matter of conservative policy. Since Kasich doesn’t have a good fiscal reason to defend it, he resorts to invoking God literally all the time to defend it.
Over at Watchdog.org, Jason Hart has catalogued a few dozen of the literally hundreds of times that Kasich has invoked Matthew 25 specifically to defend his policy. As we noted yesterday, Kasich’s reliance on the Bible for defense of his policy is so absolute that he has resorted to sarcastically offering to purchase Bibles for people who oppose it. And if that were not enough, Kasich has been known to regularly refer to himself as Jesus.
So it came as some surprise today when Kasich claimed, in a clear swipe at Ted Cruz, that he wouldn’t be bringing God into this campaign. Seriously. A man who has invoked the Bible more often than former Baptist pastor Mike Huckabee in the last year says it “cheapens” God to refer to him in a political campaign:
This notion that I’m not conservative is the most absurd thing, because even the New York Times says I’m not a moderate,” Mr. Kasich said at a Bloomberg Politics breakfast here Wednesday. “I don’t know why I can’t win conservative votes. I don’t know why I wouldn’t be able to win evangelicals. I don’t go out and try to win a vote using God. I think that cheapens God. But people know I’m a man of faith… I never have felt there was any vote I couldn’t get.”
This statement is so bizarre and absurd it’s difficult to know where to begin, so how about at the beginning? A conservative would know that “even the New York Times says I’m not a moderate” is a terrible way to convince people that you are a conservative. A moderate would think it’s a great idea.
As for “I don’t know why I can’t win conservative votes,” a pretty good reason would be that you hired John Weaver, whose entire schtick is convincing candidates to appeal to New Hampshire Democrats by bashing conservatives.
As for “I don’t go out and try to win a vote using God. I think that cheapens God[,]” well, that’s easily the biggest lie of the Presidential campaign thus far. Just because you don’t use God as a reason to, say, oppose abortion or gay marriage doesn’t mean you aren’t using God. Using God to defend the extrication of taxpayer money to fund government-run healthcare is still “using God,” sir, and it cheapens God that you refuse to admit it.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member