Kasich on the front page
Yesterday's Intelligencer top-of-the-page headline proclaims the earth-shattering news:
Kasich Touts His Conservatism
Okay, by what criteria is this the top new story of the day? Did readers not know that he was conservative? Or is it that he was hiding it and now he's touting it? Neither. Simply put -- this is just another article to push the Kasich candidacy.
Compare that to yesterday's Charleston Gazette-Mail which had the following lead headline:
Legislature overrides Tomblin vetoes
In fairness to the Intelligencer, they did carry an AP report on the legislative overrides. And blame the Gazette-Mail -- for some unexplained reason, they failed to tell its readers about Kasich touting his conservatism.
Kasich featured in a Mike Myer column
Today's Michael Myer column uses a recent speech by Upper Ohio Valley NAACP President Darryl Clausell as a springboard for attacking all, except one, of the candidates in the Republican and Democratic presidential fields. According to Myer, Clausell:
. . . focused on candidates for president, of both political parties. "They're so busy about talking separatism and keeping us apart, it's ridiculous," he said, adding, "What politician do you hear say, 'Together we can move mountains. Together we can fix our society. Together we can fight injustice'?"
Myer then corrects Clausell:
Well, there is one. Ohio Gov. John Kasich, still standing in the narrowed-down field of Republican candidates for president, has gone out of his way to avoid targeting classes of people as enemies of the rest of us.
He hasn't targeted classes of people? Running for governor in 2010, Kasich said that he would "break the back of organized labor in the schools" and once he became governor he expanded that and went after public unions and their members (all 360,000 of them) including their right to strike and negotiate for obvious things like health care and pension benefits. Sorry, but that looks like targeting a class of people to me. And what about Planned Parenthood? Marilou Johanek of the Toledo Blade explains why the politically-savvy Kasich waited until after the New Hampshire primary to defund Planned Parenthood:
Moderate Republicans in New Hampshire would look askance at a supposedly measured candidate stumping for president who would strip government money from Planned Parenthood. So Candidate Kasich waited until after the primary to jump on that right-wing bandwagon.
The governor, who has signed multiple abortion restrictions into law, favors defunding Planned Parenthood programs in the state that the organization says “provided over 47,000 STD tests, more than 3,600 HIV tests, and served nearly 2,800 new or expectant mothers” last year. But signing a bill that targets about $1.3 million in grant money the agency would receive through Ohio’s Department of Health is a politically savvy step going into the South Carolina primary.
And so Kasich has targeted at least two classes of people -- unions workers and the women who depend upon Planned Parenthood for health and family planning and Myer is very much aware of both targets. But for Myer, those are good targets and so we won't read about them -- there's an election to be won.
Update January 15 - more "guns and religion"
I neglected to note that Myer's column makes yet another reference to Obama's "guns and religion"speech from 2008:
And, of course, the progressive, intellectual class - who doesn't think he's part of that? - agrees with him that other enemies are those small-minded people who worry about things like religion and the Second Amendment.
I wrote about "guns and religion" last Tuesday and noted how quickly our legislature passed an open-carry gun bill and a "religious freedom" bill which allows people to discriminate or, to use Myer's words, "target classes of people as enemies of the rest of us." I suggested on Tuesday that Myer has no self-awareness. I may have been wrong -- as I argue above, he is more-likely quite aware of what he is doing and consequently will use whatever works to make his case.
