Kasich seemed to be referring to the argument advanced by some conservatives that much government aid could be replaced by private charity. “We do need to reawaken people” to help their fellow man, he said. “But that doesn't mean government just disappears.” His definition of conservatism, he told me, is lifting people up by giving them the tools to help themselves. “People in Ohio are more hopeful [now] that they’re included. What's better than that?” he said. “I think that’s conservatism. If it isn’t, it ought to be called that.”

This sort of thing has gotten Kasich labeled a “big-government conservative.” But he shouldn’t be mistaken for a liberal. He believes in lowering taxes and eliminating regulations on business in order to spur economic growth. In his 2007 book Stand for Something, Kasich argues that, despite a recent string of scandals involving companies like Enron, more regulation was the wrong answer, because “you can’t legislate ethical behavior,” and “so-called corporate reform” was actually “stifling the progress of American business.” That was written while Kasich was on the payroll of Lehman Brothers, the Wall Street firm that imploded during the 2008 financial crisis.

Kasich’s current pitch to GOP voters rests on these twin pillars of trickle-down economics and Christian compassion. New Day for America, the nonprofit backing him, has been airing television ads that tout his work balancing the budget in the 1990s—he was the Budget Committee chairman under then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich—alongside footage of regular people and the slogan, “John Kasich’s for us.” Supporters believe there is a good chance that Jeb Bush, the establishment-backed frontrunner, will stall out or falter, leaving Kasich—another popular two-term governor of a big swing state, moderate in temperament, conservative in governance—as the preferred candidate of the coastal-donor classes.

Is there a constituency in the Republican primary electorate for Kasich’s philosophy? Some are now comparing him to Jon Huntsman, the former Utah governor who ran to the left of the Republican field in 2012 and failed to make much of a mark. Kasich has retained the same strategist, John Weaver, who worked for Huntsman; after I quoted Weaver in my profile of Kasich, the strategist, who had not previously met Kasich, reached out to offer his services, he told me. Weaver, a former adviser to John McCain, is also persona non grata on the right for having worked for Democrats and for calling the GOP a “party of cranks.”

In profile, Huntsman and Kasich are similar: conservative pragmatists tarred by association with Obama. (Huntsman served as Obama’s first ambassador to China. Unforgettably and unaccountably, he spoke Chinese during a GOP debate in 2012.) But in temperament, they are very different. Huntsman, the heir to a vast fortune, exuded upper-class pretension as he lectured voters on what he called the “trust deficit.” Kasich, the son of a Pittsburgh mail carrier, has a feisty, irreverent, determinedly unpretentious demeanor. He can seem charmingly unpolished—or he can seem like a jerk, as when he harangued two fellow Republican governors and a wealthy donor during a meeting hosted by the Koch brothers.