“Uberize The Federal Government?”: Uber Isn’t A Model For Government, Despite What Republicans Argue
A couple of years ago, Republicans made no secret of their love for Uber – not just as a service, but as a model. “Republicans love Uber,” Politico noted. “The Republican Party is in love with Uber, and it wants to publicly display its affection all over the Internet,” National Journal added. Uber has become a “mascot” for Republicans “looking to promote a new brand of free market conservatism,” The Hill reported.
Vox noted late last week that John Kasich is making this affection for Uber a central rhetorical element of his struggling presidential campaign.
At the Conservative Political Action Conference [Friday], long-shot Republican presidential candidate John Kasich argued that we should “Uberize the federal government.”
Kasich didn’t go into much detail about what this means, but it’s a line that he’s been using for weeks on the campaign trail.
Much of this is symbolic, not substantive. Republican policymakers at the local level actually tend not to like Uber much at all, but at the national level, where presidential candidates tend to paint with broad brushes, the car-service technology has come to represent a breakthrough against regulations and against organized worker rights.
And with this in mind, when a presidential candidate like Kasich says he wants “Uberize the federal government,” it’s worth asking what in the world such a model might look like.
The New York Times’ Paul Krugman’s answer rings true.
Bear in mind that the federal government is best thought of as a giant insurance company with an army. Nondefense spending is dominated by Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and a few smaller social-insurance programs (now including the subsidies in the Affordable Care Act.) How, exactly, is an Uber-like model supposed to do anything to make that work better?
And don’t say it would remove the vast armies of bureaucrats. Administrative costs for those federal programs are actually quite low compared with the private sector, mainly because they’re not trying to deny coverage and don’t engage in competitive advertising.
If Kasich means anything, he means “privatize”, not Uberize – convert Social Security into a giant 401(k) plan, replace Medicare with vouchers. But that wouldn’t poll very well, would it?
No, it wouldn’t. Uber is popular with voters Republicans are trying to reach, so it’s become a vehicle (no pun intended) for conservative policy goals the party has long wanted anyway – only now GOP candidates can wrap unpopular ideas in a tech-friendly package.
Of course, Kasich isn’t alone on this front: Marco Rubio has been eagerly touting the service for years, while Ted Cruz last year described himself as the Uber of Washington, D.C.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, March 7, 2016
“Ohio’s Kasich Slashes Planned Parenthood Funding”: Eager To Curry Favor With His Party’s Far-Right Base
As the field of Republican presidential candidate shrinks to just five people, John Kasich has adopted a rather specific posture: he’s the grown-up in the room. The rest of the field includes two first-term senators and two political amateurs, leaving the Ohio governor as the only candidate stressing qualities such as executive experience, governing skills, and pragmatism.
And that makes perfect sense given the circumstances. Kasich can’t be as right-wing as his rivals; he can’t be as unhinged as his rivals; and he certainly can’t avoid the “career politician” label. Looking for an opening, the Republican governor has decided to present himself as a more mainstream, and more electable, conservative.
In the five-person GOP field, that leaves Kasich as the last option for the party’s remaining “moderate” voters. But let’s not mistake perceptions for reality. As we were reminded over the weekend, the Ohio Republican may be playing the role of 2016 pragmatist, but that doesn’t make him an actual moderate.
Republican presidential hopeful and Ohio Gov. John Kasich on Sunday signed a bill that aims to strip funding from Planned Parenthood in the state. […] After Kasich came in a strong second place in the New Hampshire primary, the Republican assembly in Ohio passed legislation that targets about $1.3 million in funding for Planned Parenthood in the state.
That money helps support screenings for breast cancer, STD testing, programs working to prevent violence against women, and more.
Remember, we’re not talking about public funding of abortions, which is already largely prohibited. Rather, state lawmakers passed a measure to block “any entity that performs or promotes nontherapeutic abortions” from receiving funds for women’s health treatments that have nothing to do with terminating pregnancies.
And Kasich, eager to curry favor with his party’s far-right base, eagerly signed the bill into law.
The NBC affiliate in Columbus reported that Planned Parenthood’s work in Ohio will continue, “but its community health programs would be cut. The group says programs targeted in the bill helped Planned Parenthood in the last year to provide more than 47,000 STD tests and 3,600 HIV tests to Ohioans, serve nearly 2,800 new or expectant mothers, and inform young people and women about healthy relationships.”
In other words, in practical terms, John Kasich decided to slash services for thousands of Ohio women, for no substantive reason, with a simple stroke of his pen. The public will pay a steep price because the governor wants to advance his ambitions.
This is what passes for “moderation” among GOP presidential candidates in 2016.
Disclosure: My wife works for Planned Parenthood, but she played no role in this piece, and her work is unrelated to the organization’s affiliates in Ohio.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, February 23, 2016
“John Kasich – Only Moderately Extreme”: Remember The Last Time We Had A “Compassionately Conservative” President?
If you’ve watched John Kasich at any of the Republican presidential debates so far, two things stand out about him: (1) he wants to be the “Republican with a heart,” and (2) he completely embraces trickle-down economics. That’s pretty much the kind of thing we heard from George W. Bush in the 2000 election when he called himself a “compassionate conservative.” Compared to the rest of the field this time around, that has a lot of pundits calling Kasich the moderate of the group.
The problem is that we all got a pretty good lesson on the failure of trickle-down economics during the Bush/Cheney years. And right now, Kasich is demonstrating just how un-moderate he is on some important issues. For example, here’s what happened at a town hall event in Virginia today.
Notice that even one of his supporters called him out for saying that “women came out of their kitchens” to work on his campaign. That little gem comes the day after Kasich did this:
Gov. John Kasich has signed legislation to strip government money from Planned Parenthood in Ohio…
The bill targets roughly $1.3 million in funding that Planned Parenthood receives through Ohio’s health department. The money, which is mostly federal, supports initiatives for HIV testing, breast and cervical cancer screenings, and prevention of violence against women.
All of that reminded me of something that happened just after Kasich was elected Governor of Ohio. He came under heavy fire in his home state for the fact that all of the appointments in his administration went to white people. For a Republican, that isn’t terribly surprising. But it was his response that was jarring. Instead of working with communities of color to improve, he got defensive.
“We pick people on the basis of who’s qualified. We don’t pick them on the basis of quotas. I mean I think quotas are yesterday,” Kasich said on Jan. 2.
Kasich said he’s color blind when it comes to hiring.
“I mean let’s get the best people for the job,” said Kasich.
In other words, “the best people for the job” just happened to all be white. People of color need not apply. When Ohio’s Legislative Black Caucus offered to help him out with that, Kasich said, “I don’t need your people.”
So the moderate in the Republican presidential race is the guy who believes that:
1. if we just give rich people more tax cuts our economy will boom for everyone,
2. women are still in the kitchen and don’t deserve access to reproductive health care, and
3. the best person for any job in his administration just so happens to be white.
I’ll grant you that compared to the other 4 candidates still in this race, Kasich is slightly less extreme. But then, I’m old enough to remember what happened the last time the country had a “compassionately conservative” president.
By: Nancy LeTourneau, Political Animal Blog, The Washington Monthly, February 22, 2016
“In Search Of A David To Take On Goliath”: Will The Republican Establishment Rally To John Kasich?
As expected, Donald Trump cruised to a crushing victory in New Hampshire on Tuesday night. (Who would have believed last June when Trump entered the race that we’d be yawning at his winning New Hampshire?) Trump blew away his competitors, securing well above 30 percent of the vote – more than double that of the first runner-up.
And that’s where the real story of New Hampshire lies: Ohio Gov. John Kasich came from the bottom of the pack to secure a second-place finish. Will he be the savior to deliver us from Trump?
“Enormous pressure is on the establishment wing to consolidate around one candidate soon,” Republican strategist Ron Bonjean says, “or else it will hand the Republication nomination over to Trump.” Indeed, the Republican primary has made a fickle fashion show thus far. The establishment and donor classes have tried on different candidates, sizing up their chances of taking down Trump before casting them aside for the next contender.
Even before Trump took over the race, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush was supposed to be the party’s heir-apparent. Leading in the earliest polls (pre-Trump, of course), he had the name and the cash to make the establishment drool. But Trump’s entrance into the race flat-lined Bush’s already lackluster campaign, and Jeb’s been floundering ever since to regain steam, with little success. Consider that his campaign is touting his fourth-place finish in New Hampshire as a sign of great momentum. Please clap.
Then there was Ben Carson, an outsider like The Donald but more humble than braggart. Carson shot to favor in August and soared so close to Trump in the polls that the nervous front-runner publicly compared him to a child molester and mocked his self-described violent past. Amid more questions about his biography and bizarre religious and historical beliefs, Carson’s near-catatonic excuses proved ineffective and his support plummeted by mid-November.
Enter Sen. Ted Cruz, who almost immediately rose to second place. A month out from the Iowa caucus, he secured endorsements from influential conservatives in the state like Rep. Steve King. Yet almost as quickly as Cruz settled in behind Trump, the Republican establishment wanted him out. It turns out that nearly everyone who has come into contact with the senator from Texas dislikes him. With a passion.
Faced with the option of a President Trump or a President Cruz, the GOP looked ready to unfurl a “Make America Great Again” banner over the White House. Yet rather than capitalizing on this momentum, Trump busied himself picking a fight with the GOP’s official mouthpiece, Fox News, skipping the last debate before the caucus. Meanwhile, Cruz zeroed in on Iowa’s evangelical vote and came out of the Feb. 1 caucus with a surprise win.
Now desperate, the establishment looked to Florida Sen. Marco Rubio for salvation. Rubio took the bronze in Iowa but treated it like a runaway victory, and that was good enough for the Washington establishment. He shot up in national polls and climbed to second place behind Trump in New Hampshire last week. He looked to be just the bright, energetic contender the party had been waiting on to unite its factions and take down Trump – until he famously malfunctioned at last week’s GOP debate, earning nicknames like “Rubot” and “Marcobot.” Rubio finished fifth in New Hampshire.
Which brings us to Ohio Gov. John Kasich. “What’s clear is that Christie’s suicide attack against Rubio had an impact on voters who turned to Kasich and Bush as an alternative,” says Bonjean. Long overlooked by the Republican establishment, the governor is suddenly number two.
Kasich bet the farm on New Hampshire. Barely two months ago, he was polling sixth among GOP candidates in the Granite State. He put in more appearances there than any other Republican and built up a muscular ground operation, and it paid off.
Whether or not Kasich’s win is also a win for the establishment is up to the party itself. The revolving door of favored alternatives to Trump is spinning faster and faster, nurturing the chaos that has handicapped Republican opposition to Trump from the start. But if it stops with Kasich, there could be bright days ahead.
Kasich is everything Trump is not. He’s experienced – serving nine terms in Congress before becoming governor; bipartisan – the twice-elected chief executive of critical swing state Ohio; thoughtful – he’s consistently touted realistic and detailed policy platforms, and even The New York Times endorsed him as “the only plausible choice for Republicans tired of the extremism and inexperience on display in this race.” He’d be a formidable opponent to Democrats in the general election.
If Republicans can rally around Kasich, Trump’s a goner. It’s a big if – Kasich didn’t finish far enough ahead of Bush (who finished fourth) or Rubio to decisively clear the field. Without a concerted effort to consolidate voters around one candidate, the madness seems ripe to continue in South Carolina. My guess is that Trump will continue his winning streak in the Palmetto state next week – though pundits predict Cruz might carry the day with the evangelical vote, my read is that anti-immigrant sentiment runs so deep in the South, where voters are still miffed that Barack Obama has been president for eight years, that Trump will prevail. But still, the division would remain. But if Republicans rally around Kasich, where can Trump go from South Carolina? Not very far, if two-thirds of the GOP sided with Kasich and the rational wing of the party.
All we’ve heard from the Republican establishment this cycle is weeping and the gnashing of teeth over Trump’s lead. And now they have a man in hand who could topple the tyrant – let’s see if they truly want to.
By: Emily Arrowood, Assistant Editor for Opinion, U.S. News & World Report, February 10, 2016
“The Governors Exact Their Revenge On Marco Rubio”: Governors Against Callow And Outrageous Candidates
There was a time when Republican governors were not all that different from Democratic governors.
The politicians from both parties who ran the states tended to be a pragmatic lot. They were pro-business because they wanted their people to have jobs, but they championed government spending in the areas that contribute to economic development, starting with education and transportation.
Democratic governors still largely behave that way, but many of their Republican peers have followed their national party to the right and now run far more ideological administrations. North Carolina, Kansas and Wisconsin are prime examples of this break from a longer GOP tradition.
But in a pivotal debate here on Saturday night, the old solidarity among Republicans in charge of statehouses made a comeback of convenience. Govs. Chris Christie of New Jersey and John Kasich of Ohio and former Florida governor Jeb Bush are competitors, but they had no qualms about creating an ad hoc alliance that might be called Governors Against Callow and Outrageous Candidates.
They took on both Donald Trump and, indirectly, Sen. Ted Cruz. But their central target was Sen. Marco Rubio, who had a chance to put all three governors away with a strong performance. Instead, thanks to the pugilistic Christie, Rubio wilted.
In nearly every season, there is a media favorite whose standing with journalists relates not to ideology but to what reporters think a good candidate should look and sound like. For some time, Rubio has been that guy. Fresh and fluent, Rubio seems to bridge the party’s divides. He was nominated for the Senate as a tea party favorite, but was really an insider. You don’t get to be speaker of the Florida House of Representatives by being a mavericky rogue.
On paper at least, he’s the potential GOP nominee who scares Democrats the most. A young Cuban American (age: 44) would presumably have a nice edge on either of the Democratic candidates (ages: 68 and 74), and Rubio loves playing the generational card.
In practice, trying to be all things to all Republicans has often thrown Rubio off balance. His multiple positions on immigration reform make him both a target of the GOP’s anti-immigration hard-liners and the object of (mostly private) scorn from Republicans who were struggling to get an immigration bill passed.
All along, the question about Rubio has been whether he’s too good to be true. After Christie’s clinical takedown during their encounter at Saint Anselm College, this suspicion is now front and center.
“Marco, the thing is this,” Christie thundered. “When you’re president of the United States, when you’re a governor of a state, the memorized 30-second speech where you talk about how great America is at the end of it doesn’t solve one problem for one person. They expect you to plow the snow. They expect you to get the schools open. And when the worst natural disaster in your state’s history hits you, they expect you to rebuild their state, which is what I’ve done. None of that stuff happens on the floor of the United States Senate.”
Ah, yes, governing is about running a government, even if Republicans aren’t supposed to like government.
The real shock was that Rubio played right into Christie’s hands by repeating a canned attack on President Obama four times. Christie couldn’t believe his good fortune. “There it is. There it is,” Christie declared, basking in his eureka moment, and chopping five seconds off the prefabricated Rubio sound bite. “The memorized 25-second speech. There it is, everybody.”
Of course, none of the three governors is like the moderate (let alone liberal) GOP executives of old. Kasich came closest when he insisted that conservatism should mean that “everybody has a chance to rise regardless of who they are so they can live their God-given purpose.” Bush had by far his best debate, for once taking on Trump without backing off, and he has looked comfortable, even happy, in his final town halls around the state. But over and over, Bush made clear just how conservative he was as governor, and how conservative he’d be as president.
Nonetheless, for one night, positioning, ideology and Obama-bashing wrapped in an attractive new package were not enough for Rubio. It’s not clear what Christie did for his own candidacy, but he performed a service by reminding his party that running a government is serious work and ought to be respected. That this was revelatory shows how far contemporary conservatism has strayed from the essential tasks of politics.
By: E. J. Dionne, Jr., Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, February 7, 2016
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