If there was a film that reminded me of the character of Governor Kasich of Ohio it would be the Three Amigos, the classic comedy done by Steve Martin, Chevy Chase, and Martin Short. In that film three film actors were hired to be real life gunman by a desperate village hoping the Three Amigos would stand up to a group of tyrants. Only the Three Amigos believe that the whole ordeal is only another film—they have no idea that the situation they’ve been hired for is actually real. So they engage the bandits with bravado—the kind of valor displayed in their movie characters. Of course, the bandits are real, and when the Three Amigos engage them, bad things happen. When Steve Martin gets shot by a real bullet, the three movie friends have a nervous breakdown and cry before their enemies and beg for their lives. In a lot of ways that is what happened to John Kasich in Ohio. He was elected as a Tea Party governor by a village desperate for protection—and when he engaged the real life thugs—the labor unions—the special interest groups—the Obamanites—and poll numbers—he revealed himself to be only an actor who used to host on Fox News. Kasich begged for his life, hat in hand. This was the metaphor I used on a recent Michigan radio broadcast on WAAM with Matt Clark.
John Kasich unlike the Three Amigos is all by himself—he is all those comedy characters rolled up into one person. He has the statesmanship of the Steve Martin character, the naïveté of Martin Short, and the clumsy stupidity of Chevy Chase. But the sum of his entire personality—and role as Ohio’s governor is that his is the One Amigo—friend to himself—and nobody else. For a tough talking governor who declared that he would be willing to run one term and leave back to the private sector—that he only wanted to be governor to do good for Ohio—he has turned out to be a phony. He is currently seeking a second term, and beyond that—is a presidential hopeful. Just like everyone else before him—Kasich proved to be only an actor talking a good game, but in the end, he fell in love with the opulence, the respect, and glamour of being in charge of a state.
The final straw with Kasich is his intentional exploitation of the poor through Medicaid expansion to win votes and popularity. He lost the unions through Senate Bill 5 and stood with the Tea Party. He abandoned the Tea Party after that union loss. He lost the cops, the teachers, and the firefighters—which he never really had, he lost the women, he lost the blacks, he lost the immigrants—so he is looking to repair those demographic numbers with Medicaid expansion even by-passing the state legislature in the process. In his pursuit of a second term, he has become a tyrant—an actor looking for another gig.
Without question the Republican Party is behind some of Kasich’s plans. They do not want to lose a Republican governor in an election—because in the game of politics, the winner is the side with the most “Rs” in office over “Ds.” They don’t care how the “Rs” get into office—so long as they call themselves Republicans. They don’t care if Kasich maintains conservative ideals, or stands for anything at all—because their goal is to win the political game with more people calling themselves Republican—even if deep in their hearts they are Democrats.
What politicians like Kasich learn too late is that the game he was playing is all too real. The village really needed a gunman to defend them, and the bandits are actually sinister. So like the Three Amigos who realized they were way over their head—sought the comfort of their mansions, and opulent lifestyles to shield their sensibilities from the aggression of the real world threats. Kasich retreated from his values rather quickly, and has become a major disappointment. He talks tough, but in the end he is like what I said to Matt during our interview—more reminiscent of a female sex organ—and what’s happening to the Republican Party—and the freedom movement reflects that submissive role. Like a common whore happy to give out such submissive positions to more aggressive alpha Democrats, Kasich thinks he can play the game of politics in his favor by making deals—just like a slut makes deals with a pimp and hopes to hustle a few favors in the process.
If Kasich were a real hero, and not a fake like in the Three Amigos, he would stand for something—but this is where he is weak. Now that he’s been discovered as a fraud, as only an actor and not a metaphorical “gunman” his political enemies know how to destroy him—which of course won’t be any benefit to the Republican Party anyway. As it stands, Kasich is no different from Ted Strickland—his previous rival for office. The only real difference is that Kasich knows how to act like he cut the state budget by simply shuffling money around and calling it a balanced budget. It’s similar to the slut who pretends to perform sex acts on a drunken customer who has passed out. They’ll never know if the prostitute actually did the things they were charged for—because they were passed out. Kasich plans to do the same in the 2014 election. He has the “R” next to his name, but he’s every bit a progressive as Ted Strickland was, or Senator Sherrod Brown is currently. They are all big government people who play political games with stolen money and hide the behavior behind an acting job. Kasich is simply the “One Amigo,” instead of three.
Because of Kasich the roots of Obamacare will spread deep into Ohio for years to come—and he will incentivize more poor people to stay poor, and become more dependent on the government. It will always be Kasich’s mistakes as governor that will determine the future encroachment of Obama’s tyrannical wealth redistribution scheme. Kasich took the bait from Obama, the way a whore takes the bait of a $100 dollar bill. He thinks the garbage he gets in to will wash off after the act with a nice shower, but that is because he hasn’t considered that he might receive a sexually transmitted disease that will stay with him the rest of his life. Obamacare to Ohio is like a sexually transmitted disease spread to everyone through Medicaid expansion—a deal that literally screws Ohio for decades in the future only for the purpose of John Kasich to exploit the poor and win re-election.
The Kasich governorship is a comedy act in the same way that the movie the Three Amigos was intended; only the implications are not just laughs, but long-term peril. When the movie Three Amigos ends, the DVD can be removed and life continues on, but with Kasich, his blunders will stay with Ohio forever—because like an STD, the disease of liberalism will reside within the laws of the state perpetually. The metaphors as bombastic as they may sound are appropriate, and good radio for Matt Clark’s show, but therapy for a state deeply frustrated by Kasich and his foolish antics. His comedy act is appreciated by people like Obama, Sherrod Brown and other progressives—but for everyone else, it’s not funny. For everyone else, we are like Steve Martin wounded from a bullet realizing too late that the danger is very real—and we’re not just play acting.
Rich Hoffman
The Overmanwarrior 