Meghan McCain Flattens Anti-Trump John Kasich on Live TV

Printed from: https://newbostonpost.com/2020/09/22/meghan-mccain-flattens-anti-trump-john-kasich-on-live-tv/

John Kasich had every reason to believe he would be given a free ride on ABC’s daytime talkfest The View. And he was greeted that way by host Joy Behar who gushed, “My favorite convert, John Kasich.” 

After all, the former Republican governor of Ohio had garnered fawning coverage from the mainstream media for his public proclamation of support for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris in the coming presidential election. In this case, Kasich gave the liberals a much-prized political twofer:  Not only was he an important GOP figure switching allegiances to the Democrat banner, but more importantly he was a self-proclaimed pro-life politician endorsing the most stridently pro-abortion ticket in American history.

That’s the type of unilateral surrender of principle that progressives from NARAL to The New York Times, from EMILY’S List to NBC, from Planned Parenthood to The Boston Globe usually can only dream about. So what could possibly upset the liberal lovefest on The View?

Unexpectedly but refreshingly it came from a McCain. Meghan McCain, to be precise.

As a faithful member of the McCain family, The View panelist made clear her well-documented antipathy toward President Donald Trump. “I hate President Trump,” McCain stipulated, “and I think everyone knows that.”

After proving her disdain for the incumbent, she pivoted to the Biden-Harris pro-abortion ticket. “There are some policies on the Left,” McCain said, “specifically with Senator Kamala Harris right now having to do with abortion. She co-sponsored a bill opposing any limits, at all, when you can get an abortion. And it’s a big break from Joe Biden’s past positions. And the Biden-Harris campaign is also running on taxpayer funding for abortions – I was surprised at this — including those after 20 weeks.

“You’re pro-life,” she continued directly addressing Kasich’s flip-flop, “and you were pro-life when you were in politics, as am I. It’s a big, big part of who I am and my platform. I don’t think taxpayers should be funding abortions for women, who are as pregnant as I am right now.

“So how would you,” she asked, “push back against a voter like me who’s concerned about things like this in a possible Biden-Kamala administration?”

Imagine that? A McCain making the best case yet heard on broadcast network television about Biden, abortion, and apologists like Kasich.

Kasich first claimed, “I agree with your position on the life issue, Meghan.” And while he was in the U.S. House of Representatives for 18 years and served as governor of Ohio for eight years, Kasich generally adopted Republican pro-life positions. Despite signing many pro-life bills as governor, Kasich did veto the Heartbeat Bill on the pragmatic grounds of avoiding expensive litigation for the state of Ohio. Kasich certainly disappointed pro-lifers with that veto, even when his public record tended toward anti-abortion, if decidedly imperfectly so.

Clearly a bit flustered by McCain’s powerful presentation, Kasich stumbled. “Again,” he confusingly interjected, “I’m not a person.” Perhaps demonstrating a subconscious understanding of the personhood of an unborn child, the usually self-assured Kasich abruptly stopped and detoured.

“First of all,” he parried, “I disagree with Joe Biden in a number of areas. I don’t like some of what he’s talking about in terms of capital gains taxes.”

What? Meghan McCain asks you a probing question about the most pressing human rights issue of our time, and all you can think of is the most efficient tax rate for capital gains. Talk about a non-sequitur that oozes false equivalency, while ducking the real issue.

Kasich proceeded to dig himself into a deeper hole. “But the issues here are dwarfed in my opinion,” he tried to explain, “by the fact he’s a person that can pull us together. So do I think that if he wins that all of a sudden all these things are going to happen that are negative?

“No,” Kasich answered himself.

“I don’t believe that at all,” he added, “because that’s not his character. That’s not who he is.” One wonders how Kasich can extol the character of a politician who would force the Little Sisters of the Poor to pay for contraception and who willfully surrendered his long-held principled opposition to taxpayer-funded abortion in order to curry favor with the left wing of the Democrat Party. That, Mr. Kasich, is surely “who Joe Biden is.”

When he took the unprecedented step of endorsing Biden at the Democratic National Convention on August 17, Kasich made a similar point. “I know the measure of the man,” he stressed. “He’s reasonable, faithful, respectful, and, you know, no one pushes Joe around.” To which one asks:  If “no one pushes Joe around,” why did he so ignominiously cave to progressives when they demanded he change his abortion position from moderate to extreme pro-abortion? What’s “reasonable” about that? To whom and to what is Joe Biden “faithful”?

During his appearance September 11 on The View, Kasich tried to soften up McCain with a personal reflection on her dad, the late Senator John McCain of Arizona. “As you know, your father,” he said, “and Joe were great friends.” The former Republican Congressman seemed to be dangling the tempting idea that friendship provided adequate justification for abandoning one’s principles.

He followed by repeating his irritating habit of self-inquiry. “Do I think,” he queried himself, “we’re going to end up in some cataclysmic place if he wins?”

Swinging at his own softball, Kasich unsurprisingly concluded, “I don’t.” 

Whether a Biden-Harris administration will be “cataclysmic” for unborn babies seemingly never crossed Kasich’s mind. Maybe he was too busy calculating the higher taxes he may have to pay under a Biden tax increase. Let’s not forget that this is the same John Kasich who, while constantly reminding voters that his father was a middle class mail carrier, lugged home more than $600,000 in salary and bonuses from Lehman Brothers in 2008, the year the investment house declared bankruptcy, igniting an economic meltdown in the final months of the George W. Bush presidency.

Never missing an opportunity to bash President Trump, to whom he lost the 2016 Republican nomination, Kasich added, “But I do believe four more years of this division is wrecking the very soul of our country.”

Apparently Kasich believes “the very soul of our country” will not be damaged by four years of Joe Biden’s extreme pro-abortion policies. Nor does he worry about the liberal court justices that Biden has pledged to appoint in order to further his abortion policies, while cementing Roe v. Wade for generations to come, and generations not to come in the case of countless unborn babies. And Kasich sees no threat to “the very soul of our country” in supporting Biden who represents an across-the-board attack on the free exercise of religion, beginning with the punitive Biden Mandate against the Little Sisters of the Poor.

If the Little Sisters are not safe in a President Biden’s America, who can possibly be?

 

Joseph Tortelli is a freelance writer. Read other columns by Mr. Tortelli here.