An editorial from the Parkersburg News and Sentinel
PARKERSBURG, W.Va. — A week from today, Ohio Republicans have a chance to remind the rest of the country there is a better choice to be the GOP nominee for president.
Gov. John Kasich has not attracted the national spotlight he deserves, partly because he has stayed out of the three-ring circus being performed by Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz and Donald Trump. But Ohio voters know Kasich is equipped to serve in the most powerful office in the world, in a way the others simply cannot match.
He was a member of Congress for 18 years, and was chairman of the U.S. House Budget Committee, where in 1997 he was heralded as “chief architect of a deal that balanced the federal budget for the first time since 1969.” As governor of Ohio for the past five years, his successes have included the elimination of an $8 billion budget shortfall he inherited from his Democratic predecessor; bringing the state’s Rainy Day fund up from nothing to approximately $2 billion; eliminating Ohio’s estate tax and signing a budget in 2015 that includes a 6.3 percent state income tax cut.
Kasich understands fiscal responsibility; and he knows how to run a government. Ohioans re-elected him with an overwhelming vote of confidence – he won all but two of the Buckeye State’s 88 counties – because he has proven to be an effective, thoughtful, successful leader.
He would inhabit the Oval Office with experience and abilities the other candidates do not have. Kasich has been a member of the U.S. House Armed Services Committee, he has been an investment banker, a corporate board member, a New York Times bestselling author and, yes, even a television host (he filled in as guest host occasionally on The O’Reilly Factor and other shows, as well as briefly hosting his own show on Fox News during the early 2000s.) He has fought the Environmental Protection Agency on behalf of those it is trying to crush here in Appalachia; and he has signed a bill meant to protect water quality in Lake Erie: He knows the importance of reason and balance.
Voters across the country have perhaps been slow to take note of Kasich precisely because he chooses to campaign for the highest office in the land with the same quiet, hard-working, poise Ohioans have come to know. He chooses to lift people up and reach across the aisle. He does not go for oversimplified one-liners that appeal to fear and frustration – and attract all the wrong kinds of attention.
So show them, Ohio. Shine the spotlight for Kasich next week. Your vote could make an enormous difference for the direction of this presidential election and for the future of the country.
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