Looking To 2016...

by: Les Carpenter
Rational Nation USA
Purveyor of Truth

Following last nights rather mundane and short on specifics SOTU by President Obama I started thinking about the future and if there is anyone in the current ranks of the GOP or the Libertarian Party who could possibly be elected to the presidency in 2016. Frankly given the crop of malcontents and loonies(Christie doesn't fall into that group but he has shot himself in the big toe) that seem to be getting attention in the GOP it appears unlikely.

Tonight while browsing the net the following article popped up and given the headline was along my line of thinking last it was a must read. Got me thinking again and if the GOP can find the intelligence to act along the lines of thought presented in the article there may just be a real race in 2016 rather than a shoo in for the democrats.

NationalJournal - For a party that's accustomed to nominating the next-in-line presidential candidate, 2016 promises to be a very unusual year for the Republican Party. For the first time in decades, the GOP has no clear front-runner or even an establishment favorite at this early stage.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie looked poised to fill that role, but his home-state scandals are endangering any national bid before it even gets underway. Jeb Bush would be an obvious contender, but Republican officials are skeptical he'd jump into the ring—all too cognizant of the baggage his last name brings. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker might be able to transcend the gap between the tea party and the establishment, but he still faces a challenging reelection back home. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida lost some cachet after his high-profile advocacy of immigration reform foundered.

But there's one candidate who isn't generating much buzz and whose résumé compares favorably with any of the top-tier candidates. He's a battleground-state governor who's looking in strong position to win a second term. He defeated one of the more popular Democratic governors in the country, who happened to be a major Clinton ally. He's from the Midwest, likely to be the critical region in the 2016 presidential election. He entered office as a prominent fiscal conservative but compromised on Medicaid expansion. And most important, Republican officials familiar with his thinking say he's seriously considering a presidential campaign.

Enter Ohio Gov. John Kasich, the swing-state executive who's currently polling at microscopic levels nationally but who could have an outsized impact on the 2016 race.

"The presidential nominee is likely to be a governor, and, frankly, Kasich is as well situated as anybody. This is a guy who can connect with a crowd, he can emote, he's got blue-collar roots, and he identifies with average folks. He's certainly no Romney," said former NRCC Chairman Tom Davis, who served with Kasich in Congress. "In my opinion, he's the total package. And I think he's interested."

By all accounts, Kasich shouldn't be considered a sleeper. As governor, he's presided over a Rust Belt renaissance, with the state's unemployment rate dropping from one of the highest in the country in 2009 (10.6 percent) to around the national average (7.2 percent) last month. In 2013, Kasich signed a sizable tax cut thanks to the state's newfound budget surplus. Kasich was among the first Republicans to tout the party's need to reach out to the disadvantaged, and he lived up to his rhetoric by passing prison-sentencing reform with support from African-American legislators.

He ran for president before in 2000, parlaying his role passing four balanced budgets with Bill Clinton as a main selling point of the campaign. In effect, he was Paul Ryan before Ryan was elected to Congress. But he barely made a dent in a year when George W. Bush secured early support from party leaders.

"Mitt Romney's biggest problem was the perception he didn't care—that's a Republican Achilles' heel almost built into the party," said former Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer. "It would be constructive to have a candidate who could diminish that gap because they're cut from a different cloth, they have a proven track record of helping the poor and middle-class, and their policies show it. For people like John Kasich, he feels it as a social calling. That has the potential to be attractive so long as it's matched with conservative ideology."

Read the rest below the fold.

Via: Memeorandum