John Kasich is the latest Republican to ask for the boot from the GOP

Not to mention a nasty tweet from the president.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Cracks in the GOP wall

He says it's because of Mulvaney's (withdrawn) admission.  Expect a nasty tweet, John.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

John Kasich: the first GOP candidate to challenge Trump in 2020?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Working toward unity - part 2

Not even in his own party.

President Donald Trump on Thursday evening, tore into Ohio Gov. John Kasich, a GOP rival and potential 2020 primary challenger.

Appearing before a Republican National Committee dinner at his downtown Washington hotel, the president went after the Ohio governor several times by name, according to three people who were present.

[...]

The remarks came on the second night of the RNC’s annual winter meeting. The president’s speech was to be pooled by the media, yet those covering the speech were escorted out a few minutes after he began talking.

[...]

Trump veered from talking about Kasich to describing in detail how he recently aced a mental acuity test – an examination, he said, most members of the media wouldn’t pass.

  Politico

That test where he had to identify a camel and know his own name?

At another point, he described Evan McMullin, a fierce Trump critic who waged a 2016 independent bid, as a “clown.”

I don't know if this is the best way to talk to the RNC. Is it supposed to make them not want to speak out against him? It could backfire.

He also argued that he would have won New Hampshire in 2016 had it not been for voter fraud, saying that liberal voters were bussed in from Connecticut and Massachusetts.

He is so very, very delusional.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Here it comes

I was wondering how many GOP Congressmen were involved in the Russia scandal themselves. Let the outing begin.

Party loyalty is often cited as the reason that GOP leaders have not been more outspoken in their criticism of President Donald Trump and his refusal to condemn Russia's interference in the 2016 presidential election. Yet there may be another reason that top Republicans have not been more vocal in their condemnation. Perhaps it's because they have their own links to the Russian oligarchy that they would prefer go unnoticed.

Donald Trump and the political action committees for Mitch McConnell, Marco Rubio, Scott Walker, Lindsey Graham, John Kasich and John McCain accepted $7.35 million in contributions from a Ukrainian-born oligarch [Leonard "Len" Blavatnik] who is the business partner of two of Russian president Vladimir Putin's favorite oligarchs and a Russian government bank.

[...]

In 2010, Oxford University drew intense criticism for accepting a donation of 75 million pounds from Blavatnik for a new school of government bearing his name. Faculty, alumni and international human rights activists claimed the university was selling its reputation and prestige to Putin's associates.

[...]

Blavatnik's relationships with Russian oligarchs close to Putin, particularly Oleg Deripaska, should be worrisome for Trump and the six GOP leaders who took Blavatnik's money during the 2016 presidential campaign.

  Dallas

I wonder how many of those few knew where their money was coming from.  Even if they did, I don't think that automatically makes them criminally complicit in anything, but it does make them suspect on the Russian-influence-kompromat front.  While Blavatnik appears to have UK-US citizenship, he is a co-owner of a Russian company, RUSAL, that is under US sanctions.  RUSAL is the second largest aluminum company in the world.

Mitch McConnell was the top recipient of Blavatnik's donations, collecting $2.5 million.

[...]

Marco Rubio's Conservative Solutions PAC and his Florida First Project received $1.5 million through Blavatnik's two holding companies. Other high dollar recipients of funding from Blavatnik were PACS representing Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker at $1.1 million, South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham at $800,000, Ohio Governor John Kasich at $250,000 and Arizona Senator John McCain at $200,000.

[...]

Ironically, the shared address of Blavatnik's companies is directly across the street from Trump Tower on 5th Avenue in New York.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Hooray Democracy

Republican party presidential candidates Ted Cruz and John Kasich have agreed to coordinate in a last-ditch effort to deny frontrunner Donald Trump the party's nomination for US president.

Cruz plans to stop campaigning for the Oregon and New Mexico primaries to help Kasich, while the latter will give Cruz a "clear path" in Indiana.

  alJazeera

....but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Jesus, Even the Semi-Sane One Is a Dick

Kasich, the Ohio governor seen as a moderate in the GOP race, was participating in a town hall campaign event in Watertown, New York, in advance of the state’s presidential primary on Tuesday.

[...]

A young woman who identified herself as a first-year student at St Lawrence University in Canton, New York, asked the candidate what he would “do in office as president to help me feel safer and more secure regarding sexual violence, harassment, and rape,” according to an ABC News report.

Kasich told the student to draw on school resources. “You ought to absolutely know that if something happens to you along the lines of sexual harassment or whatever ... you have a place to go where there is a confidential reporting, where there is an ability for you to access a rape kit, where that is kept confidential, but where it gives you the opportunity to be able to pursue justice, after you have had some time to reflect on it all,” he said.

[...]

"I’d also give you one bit of advice,” said Kasich, who has twin 16-year-old daughters. “Don’t go to parties where there’s a lot of alcohol.”

  Guardian

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

It's Not a Crusade, Huh?

As part of a broad national security plan to defeat ISIS, Republican Presidential candidate John Kasich proposed creating a new government agency to push Judeo-Christian values around the world.

[...]

"We need to beam messages around the world" about the freedoms Americans enjoy, Kasich said in an interview with NBC News Tuesday.

  NBC

Because we haven't lost our freedom from being spied on by our government? Or because only Judeo-Christian values include freedom?

He defended creating a new government agency at a time when fellow Republican presidential candidates discuss eliminating government agencies to making the government smaller.

"There's nobody who's spent more time shrinking government than I have," Kasich, the former head of the House Budget Committee said, adding that not all government programs are equal.

And if that isn't the Republican platform in a nutshell, I don't know what is. The government programs they want are inherently good. The ones they don't want are inherently bad.

The United States already has a government-funded broadcast system in Voice of America, which broadcasts American news and programming abroad.

And to be sure, very pro-American news at that.  But it hasn't yet been packaged as Judeo-Christian.

The new agency, which he hasn't yet named, would promote a Jewish- and Christian-based belief system to four regions of the world: China, Iran, Russia and the Middle East.

Because Russians aren't Christians?  And when did Iran leave the Middle East?

Another brilliant Republican foreign policy presidential candidate.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:  Matt Taibbi reported on Kasich in Concord, New Hampshire, earlier this month.

Kasich in person seems like a man ready to physically implode from bitterness at the thought that his carefully laid scheme for power might be undone by a flatulent novelty act like Trump.

Surrounded by reporters in the Concord state offices, Kasich seethes again about the tenor of the race. "I think there are some really goofy ideas out there," he says.

  Rolling Stone

UNlike a Judeo-Christian Proselytizing Agency of the US government?

UPDATE:

"Prove you're a Christian." Torquemada and the Inquisition. Salem witch hunts.

This Is the Bottom Line for Us, Isn't It?