Ohio Governor John Kasich (shown) praises the “March for Our Lives” attack on gun ownership. Put that together with his support for Obamacare and Medicaid expansion, DACA and amnesty for illegal aliens, homosexual "marriage," Common Core, NAFTA and TPP, etc., as well as his regular attacks on President Trump, and it’s little wonder that he’s the GOP darling of CNN, MSNBC, BuzzFeed, the New York Times, the The Weekly Standard, Jorge Ramos, and Bill Maher.

Ohio Governor John Kasich used his appearance on CNN’s “State of the Union” program on March 23 to jump on the media-led, juvenile-exploiting, gun-control bandwagon known as “March for Our Lives.” Like Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham, John Kasich is the kind of Republican CNN can be counted on to get behind. And the purpose of this particular CNN program with Kasich was to do precisely that: to promote his 2020 presidential race. Although Kasich has not formally announced, he’s clearly setting things in motion for it. The CNN piece opened by showing the cover of The Weekly Standard for March 23, 2018, which features a portrait of Kasich with the headline, “Party of One.” The Weekly Standard, together with National Review, provides the main voices in the Never-Trump chorus of the neoconservative Politburo that has been leading the Republican Party and the conservative movement down the Judas goat path toward ever bigger government since the beginning of the Cold War.

The CNN host began by noting with approval the huge crowds of youths participating in the March for Our Lives rallies across the country, in response to the deadly high school shooting in Parkland, Florida, on February 14. She asked Kasich if this should make Republicans worried that they will be facing a severe backlash at the polls in 2018 unless they pass “stricter gun control” laws.

Kasich jumped at the opportunity to link arms with the NRA-bashing, Second Amendment-trashing, anti-gun activists, urging them to “keep it up,” to “keep the pressure on,” to hold the politicians “accountable at the ballot box.” The kind of “accountability” he appears to be endorsing would, of course, tend to help Democratic candidates of the Obama-Clinton-Sanders-Schumer-Pelosi brand, rather than Kasich’s fellow Republicans.

“I think there’s three kinds of people who are involved in this gun debate,” Kasich said. “Those that want no changes on guns, and believe me they’re there and they’re strong, and those people that think there should be significant changes even while we protect the Second Amendment, and the third group is a bunch of politicians who are afraid of their own shadows.”

Then, sounding like a star-struck tweenybopper, the Ohio governor gushed: “The key is these young people followed by so many other people — Paul McCartney was at one of these rallies, Lady Gaga — I wish I could have met her. The fact of the matter is it’s a massive effort here and it reminds me of some of the protests that have changed the people in office.”

“But they have to keep it up,” Kasich continued. “If they don’t keep it up, those that want no change will just sit on their hands. They will never come out and say anything. They will just try to stall, stall, stall until the steam comes out of the kettle. The fact is if we can keep the pressure on we’re not going to change everything overnight, but you can get significant change, and I hope so. And if they do not, if they do not bring about change, I think people should be held absolutely accountable at the ballot box and no question about it.”

Although the March for Our Lives spectacle was falsely presented in the “mainstream” media as a spontaneous, grassroots, student-led demonstration, it was, as we have reported, totally an Astroturf affair, scripted and directed by far-Left adult activists and financed by Wall Street billionaires, pampered Hollywood millionaires, and tax-exempt foundations. Moreover, it is shamelessly exploiting a terrible tragedy and the emotional charge of the moment to conscript easily manipulated adolescents into a leftwing political army. It is a continuation and amplification of the same formula that the same forces have been using to abuse children and youth in the service of leftward agendas surrounding global warming, Black Lives Matter, DACA/Dreamers, LGBT “rights," etc.

Kasich, a veteran politician, obviously knows this; it is no secret. This pandering to the Left is what has always endeared Kasich to the “progressive” chattering classes and made him the go-to guy for the establishment media hounds looking for a Republican who can put forward a “moderate,” “centrist,” “compassionate conservative,” “reasonable conservative” take on the issues. This has always meant adopting a Democrat-Lite position, while disingenuously cloaking himself in enough of a veneer of conservative rhetoric to (hopefully) fool his more conservative base. This has been standard operating procedure for globalist/neocon Republicans for decades. However, for liberty-minded, constitutionalist-oriented Republicans, this media-approved flavor of “conservatism” is spelled RINO: Republican In Name Only. And Kasich epitomizes the RINO brand, as this short list of accolades from the Left demonstrates:

• Kasich was the first Republican governor to adopt Medicaid expansion.

• Kasich is one of the major Republican defenders of ObamaCare and has attacked the “very conservative Republicans in the House who are going to say just get rid of the whole thing.”

• Kasich was praised by radical environmentalists (Sierra Club, National Wildlife Federation, National Audubon Society) for vetoing an Ohio bill to make Obama-style renewable energy benchmarks voluntary, rather than mandatory.

• Kasich claims to be pro-life but vetoed a bill which included a provision to outlaw abortion as soon as a fetal heartbeat can be detected, which can be as early as six weeks.

• Kasich has said Republicans “focus too much” on abortion, and has said of the U.S. Supreme Court’s immoral, renegade decision in Roe v. Wade” “Obviously it’s the law of the land now, and we live with the law of the land.”

• Kasich, while he was a member of Congress, voted for President Bill Clinton’s ban on “assault rifles.”

• Kasich favors granting U.S. citizenship to illegal aliens.

• Kasich has said that Christians who own businesses should just “get over it” and go against their religious beliefs when homosexuals demand that they provide services to their “weddings.” “Make them a cupcake,” he said, in reference to bakeries that have refused to cave in to LGBT activist demands.

• Kasich received over $200,000 from Soros Fund Management (one of George Soros’ many political spigots) for his 2016 presidential race.

• Kasich received a rousing welcome from Bill Maher and his audience on Maher’s HBO program Real Time. “I think our audience agrees with me, you’re one of the good ones,” Maher told Kasich. The program was aptly titled, “John Kasich: Redefining Republican.”

• Kasich received a kudo, of sorts, from leftist Robert Reich, President Bill Clinton’s Labor Secretary, who, in reference to the 2016 GOP presidential hopefuls, called the Ohio governor “the best of a bad lot.”

• Kasich has been courted by Trump antagonist Jorge Ramos, anchor of the Spanish-language Univision network and the Fusion network’s Real America. In his profile interview with Ramos, Kasich blasted President Trump’s immigration policies but disappointed Ramos by not being willing to outright call Trump a racist.

• Kasich received compliments from discredited FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, whose emails referenced Trump as “loathesome,” “awful,” and “idiot,” but opined that Kasich was “the only sensible man” in the GOP lineup.

• Kasich has been (and remains) a major supporter and defender of Common Core, the much-despised federal education/propaganda program also known as ObamaCore.

• Kasich has appeared on major media programs, such as his appearance on “CBS This Morning to promote the very dangerous, sovereignty-destroying Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).

• Kasich has become a leading voice in the push for a Constitutional Convention, a dangerous scheme that could be used to completely sweep away all that remains of our constitutional republic and the protections for liberty it still provides against unrestrained government power.

Now in the final year of his second term as governor, Kasich is being forced by Ohio’s term limits to look for another job. Having been a politician virtually his entire adult life, he’s naturally looking at higher office. Kasich served four years in the Ohio State Senate (1979-1982) and 18 years in the U.S. House of Representatives before moving up to the Ohio governor’s mansion. During his stint in Congress (1983-2001), he earned an anemic 60 percent rating on “The Conservative Index” (now called “The Freedom Index”) of The New American.

In short, there is little in John Kasich’s political career spanning four decades to indicate that he holds sufficient ideological convictions to be accurately described as a principled conservative, let alone a constitutionalist. Nevertheless, as he gears up for a 2020 White House run (either as a Republican or Independent), he continues to posture as a conservative Republican when addressing Trump Red State audiences, and then flip-flops to his “moderate-centrist-maverick” persona when engaged with the liberal media or left-of-center gatherings.

In between his political gigs as congressman and governor, Kasich landed a slot on Fox News, hosting his own Heartland with John Kasich, as well as guest-hosting for Bill O’Reilly and making appearances on other Fox programs. This boost from Fox, which has become the principle conduit of neoconservative thought, has given Kasich national name recognition among Republicans and conservatives. Meanwhile, the friendly reception he regularly receives from CNN, CBS, MSNBC, Washington Post, Huffington Post, and other platforms in the “progressive” media orbit allow him to project his Obama-Lite, Big Government “conservatism” in kinder-softer-gentler-more compassionate packaging to Democrats and Independents.

During his 2016 presidential run, Kasich received endorsements from the New York Times, Boston Globe, Seattle Times, Chicago Sun Times, and dozens of other left-tilted newspapers. Since his failed attempt, he has continued to receive generous, favorable coverage, in an obvious effort by the “mainstream” media to position him as a viable candidate/spoiler in the 2020 Republican primaries. On his campaign website johnkasich.com, the Ohio governor proudly displays the recent op-eds he has written for the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, Time magazine, etc., as well as imbedded videos of his many appearances on CBS, CNN, NBC, MSNBC, PBS, and the other usual cheerleaders for the globalist, liberal-left agenda.

President Trump drew a furious response from his establishment media targets when he rightfully identified them as purveyors of “Fake News” and “the enemy of the American people.” That enemy has (for now) settled on John Kasich as a contender for GOP standard bearer and is busying itself helping him build presidential stature. Will Republicans — and conservative Democrats who voted for Trump — allow the New York Times, the Washington Post, and CNN to define conservatism for them and pick the “acceptable” GOP candidate for the 2020 presidential race?

Photo of Ohio Governor John Kasich

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