Disputes between lawmakers and Tea Party zealots is leading to a potential split within the Ohio GOP. This shouldn’t be a surprise, as these types of fights are going on all over the country between true believers and more pragmatic Republicans who would like to win another presidential election some day, but recent events have made the battle particularly intense here in Ohio.
But as Republicans look to take back the White House in 2016, the Buckeye State does not appear to be cooperating. Instead, Republicans in Ohio have slipped into an all out civil war, with a Tea Party faction threatening to break away from the GOP machinery.
Their complaints? A Republican senator, Rob Portman, after campaigning last year on his support for marriage being defined as between a man and a woman, abruptly reversed course once his son came out as gay. A Republican governor, John Kasich, pushed to expand Medicaid under Obamacare, despite remaining a vocal supporter of repealing the entire bill. An executive director of the Ohio Republican Party, elected after a bitter intraparty dispute, once worked as a lobbyist for Equality Ohio, a gay-rights group formed after the state voted to outlaw same-sex marriage. And never mind that House Speaker John Boehner, long a scourge of Tea Party types, is also an Ohioan, representing a southwest slice of the state.
It remains to be seen just how far the Tea Party types will go and whether this can hurt Kasich in 2014, but the signs right now point to some serious trouble.
Still, the GOP needs to wake up and start catering to the majority rather than the lunatic fringe, so this is a battle that needs to be fought.
This is pretty big news on the national level, as many GP governors have resisted the Medicaid funds. John Kasich will be running for re-election soon, so it’s not too surprising that he went in this direction.
Ohio Gov. John Kasich announced Monday that he will accept the Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act, becoming the fifth Republican governor to embrace the provision of the health care reform law that the Supreme Court made optional.
The governor unveiled the decision as part of his budget proposal.
“We are going to extend Medicaid for the working poor and for those who are jobless trying to find work,” Kasich said at a press conference in Columbus. “It makes great sense for the state of Ohio because it will allow us to provide greater care with our own dollars.”
This makes sense, and only those politicians who are obsessed with partisan politics are resisting these dollars.
The voters of Ohio soundly defeated Issue 2, thus repealing SB-5, the union-busting bill pushed by Governor Kasich.
Here is Kasich’s reaction, and you can see that he has been repudiated and perhaps humbled a bit by this smack-down. Kasich has been known for his arrogance and his combative style, so this is a real departure for him.
Kasich’s overreach gets put to the test in tomorrow’s election.
A new survey from Public Policy Polling (D) shows Ohio Democrats and public employee unions likely to win a big victory on Tuesday in the referendum on Republican Gov. John Kasich’s anti-public union bill, SB-5.
The poll shows only 36% of Ohioans will vote to support the law, while a decisive 59% oppose the bill and will vote to repeal it.
Kasich’s own approval mirrors those numbers, with only 33% approval and 57% disapproval. Kasich was elected in the 2010 Republican wave, defeating incumbent Democrat Ted Strickland by a 49%-47% margin. However, when asked if they could vote again, the respondents in this poll chose Strickland by a 55%-37% margin.
