The Ohio governor discusses being a prominent critic within the Republican party and the patterns he sees as midterms approach

As one of the most prominent critics of Donald Trump within the Republican party, John Kasich, the governor of Ohio, admits: “It’s been pretty lonely out here.”

Though he does say he would like more company in a Republican party that still seems loath to ever break with the president, even as he endangers traditional alliances or cozies up to the Russian president, Vladimir Putin. “Not that I mind walking a lonely road, I’ve done it most of my career, but always would be good if you had more people who are willing to stand up and say that’s the wrong direction,” Kasich said.

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The iconoclastic governor leans back in a chair in his office on the 30th floor of a skyscraper overlooking Columbus, Ohio, and the sprawling suburbs beyond. The former Republican presidential candidate did not endorse Trump after losing the nomination to him and has been one of the few members of his party willing to consistently and frankly criticize the administration.

He didn’t see the benefit of being contrarian for its own sake, but as a point of political principle. “You don’t want to become a nihilist, you don’t want to be Ron Paul where nothing is ever good,” Kasich said. “But you don’t want to be a robot for the party.”

Speaking to the Guardian two days after Trump’s Helsinki summit with Putin, Kasich dismissed Trump’s attempt to clean up his already infamous press conference on Tuesday.

“To me it doesn’t explain away what happened,” Kasich said about Trump’s White House statement that he meant to say “wouldn’t” and not “would”. “That was just some short little thing, I just don’t know, I mean maybe he does not understand the consequence or totally disagrees with the vitalness of Nato or the EU.”

You don’t want to become a nihilist ... But you don’t want to be a robot for the party John Kasich

Kasich noted his longstanding willingness to speak out when he thought Trump erred. “I’m not a Johnny-come-lately to this.” In contrast, the Ohio governor pointed out “most of the, people have been upset with him, and then endorse him and then they get upset with him. I just have not operated that way,” Kasich, who wrote in John McCain for president in 2016, said.

“I did not feel public pressure to have to go and support somebody that I was not convinced was going to pull the country together,” he added.

A two-term governor of Ohio who ran for office by noting “I think I was in the Tea Party before there was a Tea Party”, Kasich is now more popular with Democrats than Republicans in the Buckeye state as he has made Ohio’s expansion of Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act a key part of his legacy. A former nine-term congressman, Kasich chaired the budget committee and made his name as a fiscal hawk unafraid to take anyone in his party, including George HW Bush, who didn’t share his zeal for balanced budgets.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest John Kasich speaks during a presidential campaign stop in Annapolis, Maryland, on 19 April 2016. Photograph: Susan Walsh/AP

However, Kasich says he saw a country increasingly pulled apart by partisanship with two parties where politicians were increasingly marching in lockstep with their leadership and leaving little room for independent thinking as elected officials simply toed the party line and followed orders.

As Kasich put it: “And now if you’re Democrat, I can predict what you’re going to be. If you’re a Republican, I can predict what you’re going to be, and let’s not mingle the two.” As a result, he saw the United States moving “more and more towards a parliamentary system”, a feature he noted that was not what the founding fathers intended. After all, noted Kasich, “if they wanted that they would have copied the British system”.

Kasich did see some practical solutions to curb this trend, pointing to Ohio’s recently passed redistricting reforms to curb gerrymandering by requiring both parties to have input in future congressional maps. “I like that,” said Kasich, “because as districts become less gerrymandered and more balanced then you can’t just pay attention to your base, you can win a primary and lose a general. Right now it’s just about the primary baby in both parties.”

Kasich’s desire for independent thinking was expressed in his reluctance to support the Republican running in his old congressional seat in highly contested special election. In a looming 7 August contest between Danny O’Connor, a Democrat, and Troy Balderson, a Republican, Kasich was not yet ready to fully commit to support the Republican candidate.

“I like Troy a lot as a person,” said Kasich. “He helped me to get elected but I’m looking for some independence in a Republican. The other day I read positively that he disagreed both with the trade policies and the family separation policies [of the Trump administration] at the border.”

Both parties are moving further and further away from each other John Kasich

Kasich said: “That was encouraging to me that he said those things because I would be inclined to be for him [and] probably will be once I can make sure that I am going to see some independence.” Kasich noted his concern about Balderson stemmed from an interview where the congressional candidates couldn’t name any specific disagreements that he had with Trump. However, the Ohio governor said Balderson had “now pointed some out, so we’ll see”.

Yet his concerns about politics moving to the extremes weren’t just limited to Kasich’s own party. In looking towards the midterm elections, he noted the question of whether the current “level of enthusiasm among Democrats is because they have a better way or because they are anti-something. I don’t see they have much of a better way,” said Kasich. Speaking of the current push on the left of the Democratic party to abolish Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice), he sputtered in seeming disbelief: “I mean abolishing Ice, open borders for our country? That’s ridiculous.”

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In his view, this was the same pattern happening on the right and the left.

“Both parties are moving further and further away from each other,” said Kasich, who wondered: “What does that mean about the middle?” The Ohio Republican argued we did not know what that means. “How big is that middle? When push comes to shove is there a big middle or is there not? I don’t know. But there will be a middle.”