GOP Ohio Governor Defies G.O.P. With Defense of Social Safety Net

I often note the hypocrisy of the Republican Party and its Christofascist/Tea Party base who wrap themselves in feigned religiosity and claim to honor Christian values even as they seek to destroy America's already inadequate social safety net and pursue agendas 180 degrees opposite of the Gospel message of aiding the sick, housing the homeless and feeding the hungry.  These modern day Pharisees care only about themselves and forcing extreme views on all citizens.  Their war on Medicaid expansion is but one example.  Hence the surprise of seeing Ohio Governor John R. Kasich lambaste the GOP for what he describes as a war on the poor.  Whether or not Kasich merely sees the GOP agenda as ultimately fatal in the political future or not remains to be seen.  Here are highlights from a piece in the New York Times:

COLUMBUS, Ohio — In his grand Statehouse office beneath a bust of Lincoln, Gov. John R. Kasich let loose on fellow Republicans in Washington. 

“I’m concerned about the fact there seems to be a war on the poor,” he said, sitting at the head of a burnished table as members of his cabinet lingered after a meeting. “That if you’re poor, somehow you’re shiftless and lazy.” 

“You know what?” he said. “The very people who complain ought to ask their grandparents if they worked at the W.P.A.” 

Ever since Republicans in Congress shut down the federal government in an attempt to remove funding for President Obama’s health care law, Republican governors have been trying to distance themselves from Washington. 

But few have gone further than Mr. Kasich in critiquing his party’s views on poverty programs, and last week he circumvented his own Republican legislature and its Tea Party wing by using a little-known state board to expand Medicaid to 275,000 poor Ohioans under President Obama’s health care law. 

Once a leader of the conservative firebrands in Congress under Newt Gingrich in the 1990s, Mr. Kasich has surprised and disarmed some former critics on the left with his championing of Ohio’s disadvantaged, which he frames as a matter of Christian compassion.

[H]e defies many conservatives in believing government should ensure a strong social safety net. In his three years as governor, he has expanded programs for the mentally ill, fought the nursing home lobby to bring down Medicaid costs and backed Cleveland’s Democratic mayor, Frank Jackson, in raising local taxes to improve schools. 

To some Ohio analysts, those moves are a reaction to the humiliating defeat Mr. Kasich suffered in 2011 when voters in a statewide referendum overturned a law stripping public employees of bargaining rights. Before the vote, Mr. Kasich’s approval in this quintessential swing state plunged.

Now, as the governor’s image has softened, his poll numbers have improved heading into a re-election race next year against the likely Democratic nominee, Ed FitzGerald, the executive of Cuyahoga County. 

“This is someone who realized he had to get to the center and chose Medicaid as the issue,” said Danny Kanner, communications director of the Democratic Governors Association. “That doesn’t erase the first three years of his governorship when he pursued polices that rewarded the wealthy at the expense of the middle class.” 

Ohioans earning in the top 1 percent will see a $6,000 tax cut under the latest budget passed by the Republican-led legislature, while those in the bottom fifth will see a $12 increase, according to Policy Matters Ohio, an independent research group. 

The governor dismissed the notion that his Medicaid decision was political. “I have an opportunity to do good, to lift people, and that’s what I’m going to do,” he said.

In the interview in his office, he criticized a widespread conservative antipathy toward government social programs, which regards the safety net as enabling a “culture of dependency.”  Mr. Kasich, who occasionally sounds more like an heir to Lyndon B. Johnson than to Ronald Reagan, urged sympathy for “the lady working down here in the doughnut shop that doesn’t have any health insurance — think about that, if you put yourself in their shoes.” 

He said it made no sense to turn down $2.5 billion in federal Medicaid funds over the next two years, a position backed by state hospitals and Ohio businesses.

The governor, whose brother is mentally ill, spoke of how Medicaid would get more people into treatment, decreasing the homeless and prison populations. 

“For those who live in the shadows of life, for those who are the least among us,” Mr. Kasich said in a February speech, echoing the Bible, “I will not accept the fact that the most vulnerable in our state should be ignored.” 

In some ways, his balancing act has scrambled the usual ideological alliances. A Wall Street Journal editorial last week mocked his religion-based explanation for expanding Medicaid and labeled him “the Apostle Kasich.”  But mental health groups that usually find Democrats more sympathetic are cheering.

Whatever his motives, Kasich's behavior is reminiscent of how Republicans once acted before the rise of the Christofascists and the Tea Party Neanderthals.