Kasich taps Tapper on CNN's 'State of the Union' like a sweet maple syrup tree

Duty bound to keep outgoing, lame-duck Ohio Republican Gov. John Kasich's name front and center before he fades into the sunset, The Columbus Dispatch reported that the Buckeye State's CEO is warning that suburban women, who have "traditionally been voting Republican," are very uncomfortable with the harsh rhetoric on today's political front.

Ohio Gov. John Kasich looking his crusty

self in the Lincoln Room in the Ohio

Statehouse. His term ends later this year.

Offering nothing more than the conventional wisdom shared by most beltway pundits, that Democrats are more energized this year than Republicans, one of Ohio's best career politicians said what politicians say about respecting a free American press, despite  a Quinnipiac Poll poll showing more than 50 percent of Republicans don't trust the press and think, like President Trump believes and instructs them to believe, that media is the enemy of the people.

Appearing on CNN's State of the Union with it's super-friendly-to Kasich host Jake Tapper, Kasich said people from both parties came up to him last night at the White House Correspondents' Association dinner to say they support him should he stop his favorite peek-a-book scam of keeping the idea that he'll run to challenge Trump in 2020 and declare his candidacy.

Tapper, who with his wife was also in attendance last night at a dinner where comedian Michelle Wolff was unanimously condemned for crossing the line of attacking political people on a personal basis, couldn't help himself when, at the conclusion of an interview about everything except the state of Kasich's Ohio, he lobbed another big softball to Kasich, a former TV pro from Fox News who often substituted for now disgraced Fox News "No Spin Zone" TV leader Bill O'Reilly. Kasich, grinning like a slugger who sees a slow pitch coming his way, drove it out of the CNN park.

Kasich, a politicians politician after nearly 40 years in public office whose public service extends from 18 years in the U.S. House of Representatives to the Office of Governor, said the far-left and far-right have left open a middle ground that he purports to represent. He said that when a blue department story and a red department store no longer offer what people want, it opens the door to a third department store. Tapper got played like all other national TV political talk show hosts, giving Kasich another shot at the free-throw line to further pump up himself as a candidate who can fill the void.

It was classic Kasich, when he again said he has no idea what Democrats stand for today. For someone who's fought against nearly everything Democrats do and have stood for for decades—like taxing the rich more, universal healthcare for all, pro-choice policies, strengthening unions, supporting public schools and their teachers, expanding voting rights, and not balancing budgets on the back of those who can least afford to pay more, among a long-list of other Democratic-backed issues—it was stunning to again hear him say he doesn't know what they stand for.

At the same time, Ohio Democrats wrote a letter to Kasich telling him some of the things they do stand for, as reported by Kasich's adjunct PR department, The Columbus Dispatch. What Ohio's congressional Democrats told Kasich was to do more than he's doing on expanded Medicaid, an issue Democrats have given to Kasich without challenging him on its implementation. Waivers and work requirements, they told the governor, are bad for Buckeyes.

Appearing at the White House Correspondents' Dinner last night is further proof that Kasich is networking on the tax-payer dollar to land himself another lucrative, talking-head gig on TV that will keep his name in play for 2020. It was another example of the gone governor being gone from his normal day-to-day duties back in Ohio, where both his Republican wannabe successors, one of them his Lt. Gov for two-terms (Mary Taylor) are running as fast as they can away from him.

It's worth mentioning for Tapper's benefit, that unlike what Kasich did back in 2010, Republicans Taylor and Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine have shown the press their tax returns. Kasich refused to do this, choosing instead to let media have a 30-minute gander at just one of his tax returns with further restrictions of no copying.

Kasich got another unchallenged shot from the 3-point line to tout his fake news that back in Ohio he's balanced budgets, created jobs, and produced surpluses. He and every other state governor is by law forced to balance budgets.

Tapper doesn't care about this, otherwise he might have asked the supply-side politico why lawmakers had to fill a billion dollar whole with cuts to other programs? His statement of creating one-half million jobs is better understood when the fact is brought to light that he's underperformed the national job creation average for 64 straight months, and that Ohio today has fewer jobs than it did in 1980?

Kasich bragging about a state surplus is tempered by the fact that he stole billions from public education and local government funding to do so. Many of these same local governments have had to make up for Kasich's executive branch theft by putting tax levies on the ballot to keep services levels the same. Kasich seems to have no memory of the billions of dollars he took away from public school system budgets to fund poorly performing for-profit charter schools, among them ECOT (Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow) that gave Kasich plenty of campaign cash and a chance to address an ECOT graduating class.

When media does the bidding of flimflam politicians like Kasich, who has mastered the craft of pretending he's not a politician who does very political things while denying he's doing them, they indeed deserve the low ranking the public places on them. Until and unless Jake Tapper confronts Kasich with his own record, and all the rhetoric that surrounds it, the big, high-paid talking heads only add to their reputation of being complicit with skilled politicos like Kasich when they should be deep-diving on a record that shows Kasich's very Republican ideology doesn't work in Ohio and won't work for the nation.

Kasich's duplicity gets even worse. "I'm still a Republican ... the Republican Party left me," he told Tapper about why he's on the outs with the White House and Democrats. His political bi-sexuality is stunning, begging the question of why the media turns every outlandish statement into its own article.

Gov. Kasich can be credible, first by stop saying he does know what Democrats stand for, then by acknowledging that his performance salesmanship is part of his stagecraft to find a job where he can pontificate (a cherished goal for all former Catholic choir boys) and spread his sweet sounding but false narrative of austerity politics, while still being considered a rising star as he approaches his seventh decade of life.