However, that's not an easy decision for a lot of principled conservatives. Kasich expanded Obamacare in Ohio, and on top of the law being broadly unpopular with the American electorate, it's particularly unpopular with Republican voters. But given that the GOP frontrunner has repeatedly praised socialized health care, you'd think Kasich's policy transgression could be overlooked.
Unfortunately, Kasich is making that very, very hard to do. As we saw last night at CNN's town hall, he sanctimoniously keeps insisting that expanding Medicaid in Ohio to get his hands on Obamacare money was the right thing to do, and he portrayed it as a smart fiscal decision. The former assertion is highly debatable, and the latter is utterly delusional. Here's the transcript of Kasich explaining himself on CNN [I've abbreviated it a bit to make it more germane]:
QUESTION: Hi, governor. In Ohio you accepted Medicaid expansion and you took on the - I'm sorry, the health care exchanges and it was to help the poor. Here in Wisconsin we used - Governor Walker used BadgerCare to essentially provide the same services at the same levels, and yet we did it without creating a whole new entitlement program and expanding federal debt. Why did you choose Obamacare? Why did you choose the Washington-based solution? And why can't you guys ever look at some other source other than Washington for these solutions?
KASICH: Okay, let me say a couple of things. First of all, it's not so simple what Governor Walker did here. If you look at it, it's more complicated. … But look, I took a Medicaid program that was growing at 10 1/2 percent, and in my second year as governor it grew at 2 1/2 percent, without taking one person off the rolls or cutting one benefit. How did I do it? I brought innovation to the system. Now I then had a choice. Now that my program was under control, I then had a choice. Could I bring money back, which is frankly our money, Ohio money, back to Ohio to solve some of our problems.
