Would be Mary Taylor could be governor

Gov. Kasich's two-year active political campaign emerging from recycled presidential ambition is apparently having little useful effect in impressing a national audience.  He is hardly an asterisk in the national polls.  Maybe it's something about his curb appeal.

It's largely a media-driven campaign with the national pundits making scant  effort to scratch below the surface of the boastful blue-collar kid whose father, we are forever told,  was a mailman.

Questions arise.  Is he a RINO?  A born-again, will he run out of Biblical references  before he runs out of money.  Did he really  balance a federal budget that was zillions  in the red when he was in Congress?  Is he,  as he told folks in New Hampshire, "not at war with organized labor"? .  This is from the same fellow who collaborated with fallen presidential candidate Scott Walker to restrict public unions.  His Ohio gambit perished at the ballot box by a million votes.

And will he find a way to escape the  charter school scandal in Ohio that he helped create with his disgraced cronies and increased funding? The epic mess is being reported across the land.

Still,  in all of those days when  Ohio State's football team isn't on the field,   will he manage to convince the voter next door that he is really a compassionate Mr. Goodwrench, prayers and all.

It's an environment in which Ohio political writers are reaching for a "what if"  tale of a politcal legacy leading to his princess-in-waiting, Lt.. Gov. Mary Taylor.  I mean, one published report began so speculatively  with, "It's a minor change.  But it could be the first tangible move in what could be a crowded Republican race for governor in 2018. (Italics added)

Two "could be's"  in a single sentence  is  enough evidence of desperate  analysis of "stuff" happening.  We move on with the media speculation:

If Kasich is elected president, or could be not, Taylor has given strong notice that she will not only succeed him to fill out his term, but she also is set on running for the full-term job. She says she's "giving the idea serious serious consideration". But you know how that goes.

Next: That  would be true if Kasich is given a big job in a new Republican administration.

Taylor  says she's a great big Kasich fan and, "I think what's happening here in Ohio can be directly  attributed to him and his leadership.

Obviously she didn't have the charter school stuff in mind at the moment.

Charters: Shouldn't Angelic Kasich look homeward?

When Gov. Kasich finally settles down in  Ohio from his adopted residence in New Hampshire  - political decency will require it, folks - he will be forced to face an unspeakable charter school scandal with Team Kasich's fingerprints all over it.

The latest ugly chapter was well recorded  by reporter Doug Livingston in today's Beacon Journal. It was prompted by a  $71 million U.S. Department of Education grant to the failed Ohio charter school system. But it now appears the reviews of such national grants were submitted by the very same  school choice hucksters who have a reputation of eliminating poor  scores from the charter test grades to raise the average of their performances.

We're speaking, of course, of David Hansen, the charter-friendly operative at the Ohio Board of Education who resigned after being outed as the guy who wielded the eraser.
Not only that.  Hansen's wife is Beth Hansen, Kasich's former chief of staff who is now his presidential campaign manager.

As Livingston reported,  both Hansens met with Kasich and others  to advance their plans to  entirely convert the Youngstown public schools into a charter system,  a delicate subject in a hot political season.  Beth Hansen told the Plain Dealer that she would rather not discuss it. Nor might  Kasich, a reverential supporter of charters.

For a long time, it hasn't been a secret that the entire charter system is well protected  by the state's two top managers, David Brennan's White Hat Management and Bill Lager's Altair Learning based in Columbus.

Together,  they have been enriched with $1 billion in taxpayer money.  That arrives via their control over their "investments" in Republican  politicians  who form the pro-charter chorus in the legislature without much prodding.    Brennan, well known for his Koch-like financial contributions to sustaining his GOP causes,  once even wrote to lawmakers to remind them of his purse.

Other recipients include Columbus Republican Congressman Pat Tiberi, and Ohio Sen. Rob Portman , both of whom also endorsed the federal  grant to the Ohio system.  As usual,  Portman toyed with semantics.  His spokesperson told the Beacon Journal that the senator didn't really endorse the grant  application but  merely asked that it be "considered".  Go figure.

So Hooray for Congressman Tim, Ryan, the Youngstown  Democrat, for raising hell about the grant system's careless approval of porous applications, saying he was suspicious of what came down at the federal level.  .

But Kasich campaign spokesman Rob Nichols circled the wagons  around the Hansens, contending he could explain everything about the Youngstown meeting.  "They [Hansens]  try to leave work at the office," he said.  "So it would be unlikely that it came up."

For that nugget  of wisdom,  I cannot resist recognizing Nichols for the coveted  Grumpy Abe Linguistic Lunacy Award.  (GALL).

Wordsmith McCarthy's untrustable dictionary

It was not a good week for words in the political arena.   Let me show you:

Kevin McCarthy, a minor league prospect to succeed Speaker John Boehner, described Hillary Clinton as "untrustable".   Even if you grant the  guy from California some rein as a wordsmith,  it may not guarantee him that he will be promoted. Indeed, some of his colleagues in the House prefer to call him a pleasant "hack".

Republican Presidential candidate Ben Carson, a soft- voiced hard rightest,  warned New Hampshire voters that America is heading toward Nazi control in the highest places. "If you go back and look at the  history of the world, tyranny and despotism and how it starts,it has a lot to do with control of thought and control of speech," he said.  But he controlled  his own thoughts when he only implied that President Obama was  the reincarnation of Adolph Hitler. "I'm not going to go into that," he said. "I think that example is pretty clear."

Jeb! Bush disappointed those who believed he had a chance to be the only sane candidate in the GOP field  because of his dynastic genes, skipped a definitive response on gun control in the wake of the Oregon massacre  by saying, '"We're in difficult times in our country ... Stuff happens".   Jeb!  is new at the presidential campaign game and needs a lot more work on bumper sticker neologisms.

John Kasich, soldiering on and on for an American Miracle  despite his two pct. approval rating in the national polls, mixed his own brand of hard-shell conservatism  with cautious pragmatism as a gun-rights advocate by dodging the issue of gun control:  "Stripping law-abiding citizens of their guns, I just don't know.  I don't believe it would get the job done.  I just don't."  As a Plunderbund writer reported, guv, "Never mind that nobody serious on this issue is suggesting we strip law-abiding citizens of their guns."    Time for Kasich to get back, in his prosaic words,  to "leading America back to prosperity".

Finally, can't ignore the wisdom of Plain Dealer columnist  Kevin O'Brien, a guardian of the Chicken Coop Fringe, who believes the GOP needs to pursue its destiny with a kick -ass conservative to succeed Boehner,  who got too little "rope"  in  defining the GOP's  pit bull playbook.

O'Brien's soaring  recommendations included devout conservative  Rep. Jim Jordan,  the Ohio farm resident who now leads the untrustable GOP's Freedom Caucus - another neologism that connects a pair of mutually exclusive words on Capitol Hill,where dictionaries  are seldom found open..  .

Yogi and Scott Walker, a pair of humorists

In a blink, America lost two of its well-known humorists this week. Yogi Berra died at 90.  Scott Walker gave up his presidential bid when his campaign died.

We could all laugh when  Yogi would say profound things like:  "We made too many wrong mistakes."  Or: "Nobody goes there anymore.  It's too crowded."

Or when the sleepy-eyed Walker, the Wisconsin governor, would boast: "If I can take on 100,000 protesters, I can do the same across the world." That was his response to  a question about ISIS, his confidence swollen by his victory over public employes  unions in his state.

Side-splitting.

But he upped and quit.  That recalled an old  Yogi-ism by the baseball Hall of Famer that went: "If you don't 't know where you are going, you might wind up someplace else."

Walker, a deeply religious man who was called from above to run for president , left the scene by  saying he was "called".  That could only mean...

Hilarious?

Yogi once put it this way: "When you come to a fork in the road, take it."

Responding to a question, Walker defended  the idea of a security fence with Canada as a "legitimate"  idea, asking:  "Why are we always talking about the southern border and building a fence there.  We don't talk about the northern border."

Yogi would say, as he once did: "Take it with a grin of salt."

Meantime, we can only wonder about Gov. Kasich's reaction when Walker jumped the ship of fools.   He and Walker, like-minded on most  things,  had coordinated their efforts to kill public employe unions. Walker even was recorded in a telephone call set up by a prankster pretending to be David Koch,  saying that he talked to Kasich "every day", adding :" John's gotta stand firm in Ohio."

Right. Nice try, but  Walker and Buddy Kasich were both scrubbed from the Kochs'   earlier A-list.

And that's not funny. As Yogi would say, and did:  "We were overwhelming underdogs."


Re-posted from Plunderbund

The Cantonese chorus responds to Mt. Denali

Did you see that President Obama's renaming of Mt. McKinley up in Alaska was called  a "political stunt" ?  You could find "stunt" in big letters on the Beacon Journal's front page, courtesy of an "irritated" former Rep. Ralph Regula, 90,  a Republican from Navarre who has fought the name-change idea well before Obama  entered office.

It figured.  Obama's opponents have found him to be a convenient lightning rod for anything that goes wrong in our daily lives, from rain delays in baseball games to pie crust that sticks to the pan.  In this instance, however, the president's co-conspirator is Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, a  Republican who introduced legislation  in January to change the name to Mt. Denali.  (Her name never appeared in either BJ  story this morning.) She had this to say about Obama's "stunt":

"For generations Alaskans have known this majestic mountain  as 'the great one'.   I'd like to thank the president for working with us to achieve this significant change to show  honor, respect and gratitude  to the Athabascan people of Alaska."

 In the two long BJ articles, however, I did read of how other Buckeye Republicans wailed at Obama's action to placate those constituents who might want to pile on. .  Rep.  Bob Gibbs, of Lakeville, called it an "insult to all Ohioans" .  Rep. Jim Renacci, of Wadsworth, said Obama was guilty of diminishing the nation's "values"  - as if the GOP controlled Congress hadn't already done so.  Sen.Rob Portman a Cincinnatian who tagged along for the ride, wasn't very happy either.  Nor was Gov. John Kasich.

Unsurprisingly, some of the strongest complaints came from McKinley's adopted hometown of Canton, a name which has Chinese roots thanks to a surveyor named Bezaleel Wells in the early 1800s.  Canton is the traditional name of Guangzhou,  China. But we can't  imagine any Ohio city named  Guangzhou. The mountain was later tagged  for McKinley.

I have a solution to mollify the outraged  governor.  Why not name one of those  Indian mounds in Ohio after the governor.  Mound Kasich?  

That's not a typo.

John Kasich, the centrist ...not

Sandy Theis, the executive director of ProgressOhio, sent along a perfect cameo  of Gov. Kasich's Orwellian newspeak that captures his  huge reliance on cognitive dissonance in responding to the delicate issues of the day. Campaigning in New Hampshire, he described Roe v. Wade as the law of the land that we must live with. But the day before in Iowa,  he returned to his pro-life mode in a conversation with a woman:

Woman questioner: "In Ohio, I know half of the abortion centers closed.   Can you do that in the country if I vote for you?"
Kasich:  "We'll do our best, okay."

Not okay, guv.  It 's going to be a tough uphill presidential campaign anyway so you might as well come clean on your dedicated pro-life  position.  After all,  cheerleaders  who know you best, Lt. Gov. Mary Taylor and Ohio Right to Life boss Mike Gonidakis  have already called you the greatest pro-life governor  in America, boasting  that some of the state's toughest abortion restrictions have been signed into law by you. It has been, and will continue to be, in all of the papers as myth collides with reality.

And I didn't even mention your opposition to Planned Parenthood.

All of this leads me to a comment by Kent State University political science professor Danielle Sarver Coombs, in a speech this week at Akron Roundtable in which she referred to Kasich as a "centrist"  who could be the "last man standing".  Good grief.    A centrist who is in born-again lockstep with the Republican presidential field on most issues, calls for boots on the ground in Syria, opposed the stimulus package and auto bailout, is a charter school loyalist, ridicules public school  teachers and waffles mightily  on climate change.

On the latter, he says he  believes there is a problem but  doesn't think we should "overreact" to it, whatever the hell that means.  At the same time, he is part of a the group taking legal action against the EPA.

But as an "on the other hand" candidate, it has earned him plaudits from the gallery that on some hazy days  may be hard pressed to figure out what he really is at any given moment and settles for "centrist".

From Kasich, to Comunale, to UA

From the Weekly Reader:
Gov. Kasich turned up on the Fox News Hannity show for a reunion  among relatives who are still talking to  each other.  It was so family-ish as Kasich and Hannity engaged in chatty cordiality. .

From Kasich we learned that he was gleefully running for president only because he loves America. Spare me.  Guv,  you've been running for something for decades because your over-active ego won't let you do otherwise.

But Kasich is different this time as a born-again with a road map from God while pretending that he is a moderate.  Really.  A hawkish boots-on-the-ground moderate who spent years working for a Wall Street company that tanked, and for Fox News with a show called "Heartland with John Kasich."

Didn't know that Fox made space for moderates. So much for the new Sunny Kasich with standard photos of outstretched arms and an expression of ecstasy ready at every turn to help the less fortunate.  It is getting tiresome to hear the governor, a millionaire many times over, begin so many  responses to so many questions with the fact that his father was a mailman

But as Oscar Wilde once told us:  No man is rich enough to buy back his past.  

* * * *

When Frank Comunale summarily pulled out of the Akron Mayor's race with a resounding endorsement of Dan Horrigan, his action vibrated among the political class, including his own people who worked on his campaign the day before.    It was an  element of surprise - maybe even to him - with Comunale pleading campaign poverty and physical exhaustion.  Good grief.   The October surprise in August? Whatever.

* * * * *

Speaking of surprise, the aftershock of the incomprehensible misfirings at the University of Akron has driven off a potential new athletics  director.  Brian Wickstrom, the athletics director at the University of Louisiana at Monroe  reportedly declined an invitation  to accept the job, saying uncertainty from the sweeping changes underway at UA discouraged him from coming to the Akron campus. Grapevine news travels fast.

The vacancy is being filled by Nathan Mortimer, the school's top finance man,  following the resignation of  Tim Wistrcill.

Is this any way to rebrand the value of  a university?  

With debates, enough already!

Have they gone yet?

I mean the ten-some who appeared on Project Runway Thursday to assure us that they  had all of the critical answers for the planet.

Adulthood has never failed its pretenders more.   They talked of the future with the cliches of the  past.  Tax cuts.  Border controls. Nuclear holocaust.  Miracle work.  Resumes filled with self-glorifying hype.  Guidance from God to lead America out of Plato's cave.  Gravitas,  an earlier presidential standard, has yet to surface.

Exception:  Donald Trump, who has demonstrated by his  mugging force field  how a  once major political party has lost its immune system from hellish billionaire  invaders. He stands smugly in the center ring with all of the others consulting  their Ouija boards for adequate responses.  Until they do, which may be never, Trump remains the towering Republican experience through whom all  talk show  blessings flow.

Still, can you possibly imagine how many hours, days, weeks this crowd  spent rehearsing for their prime time show?   It appeared they all sat in the same  classroom learning to say how much they despised Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Iran,  the IRS, Obamacare, abortion, gay marriage,  job-killing other stuff.  At some point in the encounter staged by Fox News , they could have changed places before the rostrums and you would have been hard-pressed to know the difference.

Finally, holiness has a a lot to do with this sanctified group just as the fire-and-brimstoners have been  wielding threats of eternal damnation against political dissenters for decades.  Indeed, the Republican Party, intimidated by the preachers,  is now on its  knees pandering on social issues.. But Marco Rubio reproted that the GOP candidates have God's blessing.

In the end Thursday night, it was left to the national pundits to decide who was the least craziest, the current barometer that has given John Kasich a slight upward bump.   So there he was camera-wise telling us how much he cared about the less fortunate among us by supporting medicaid in another  rehearsal for his moment at the Pearly Gates.  Kasich , who has long boasted of his Ohio Miracle, stood up forthrightly and described America as "miracle" country and he wanted everybody to have a piece of that action.  The Guv already has witnessed enough miracles to qualify for sainthood.

Have they all gone yet?  Good.


  

Meet the new John Kasich, Mr. Goodwrench

Did you happen to see NBC's Chuck Todd  interview of Gov Kasich on  Meet the Press on Sunday.  If not, you can witness it on-line.

Has Kasich undergone a personality change as he gears up a team for a presidential candidacy?  Yep.  Full of rubbery smiles, collegial good natured talk, and cheerfully  boasting that he has more experience than anybody else in the GOP's expanding field.  In case Todd didn't catch that part of it, the governor repeated it authoritatively as though he were warning all of the others to pack up and leave.

Not quite an official announcement of his own yearning options that are still on the table,  he said, a handy cliche.    But....''I can a see the future," he assured doubters, even though prospective voters have yet to see him in the national polls.

 Oh,  will he make  his faithful trust in the Lord one of his enduring  conceits, as in forever explaining to impatient reporters that he's waiting for God to tell him what to do?
 As Plunderbund noted, he once told the New York Times that God advised him to run for governor.

Those references, not only by Kasich but other presidential wannabes have a way of cheapening one's reliance on personal faith for guidance to the pick of  the litter.
We prefer Aaron Rodgers mature response when the Green Bay Packers star quarterback qas asked whether God had played a role in the Packers' victory.

"I don't think God cares who wins a game," he replied.

Dispatch rapid-response team fuels presidential speculation

NOTES FROM THE SECOND MORNING AFTER...

Well, it was just a matter of hours before the Columbus Dispatch set all of us on the right track for the 2016 presidential election with whoopie speculation about  two of its favorite Republican Buckeye politicians, Gov.John  Kasich and Sen. Rob Portman.

In a long front- page piece, the story began by describing Kasich's "smashing" win and Portman's "key role in helping the GOP take control of the Senate".

Smashing?  But only if you merely consider the raw numbers  after the governor ran up the score against  Ed FitzGerald's  posthumous  campaign to a cheering section filled with huge donors, media accolades and those practiced in convenient references to the Lord.  You may recall that Kasich went to Nevada and cast God's blessing on casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, in a blatant appeal for Big Money.  On Election night, caught up in the reverance of the moment, Kasich told us that God had placed a hand on him. That doesn't leave much hope for Portman.

To speculation about his future,  Kasich stayed in form by coyly dismissing  the question. He said  he's not "thinking about the future''.  As for Portman, his chief of staff told the Dispatch that the senator is "going to meet with his family about this issue over the coming weeks" and then with "trusted advisors",  a process that could take  months. That has always impressed me as Portman's normal speed.

Meantime, let the speculation roll.

Political experts quoted in the story  agreed that both would make "viable" candidates - but as President Obama once said, "You can only have one president at a time" in deference to the fact that George Bush still had a few weeks left  in his tenure following the 2008 election.

 A cautionary footnote:  The Dispatch poured out its heart to elect Mitt Romney and its home county of Franklin  went for Obama.

* * * * *

More Grumpy style Meet the Press: The  Beacon Journal, as is its wont to be kind to   spoiled victors, described Kasich as '" governing from the center". Oh?  With hefty right-wing pals like Adelson and the Koch Brothers looking over his shoulder?

* * * * *
While we're at it, might as well note that Armond Budish, a Democrat, defeated  his Republican opponent, Jack Schron,  for Cuyahoga County Executive rather handily despite the paper's endorsement of Schron.  The paper accused Budish of being " too partisan".     And for years I thought that partisanship  was high up on the to-do list of a politician!

* * * * *
Finally, we turned to Huey Long's immortal words for the benediction on Tuesday's nightmare:  "One of these days  the people of Louisiana are going to get good government and they aren't going to like it.":



   .

Ohio newspapers launch their creative endorsements

re-posted from Plunderbund



It's been a dreary election season, folks.  No  debates that invited the public to see the contestants going at it eye-to-eye. No gubernatorial contest.   Gov. Kasich shoveling soil in his confident high definition mode as though he were needlessly digging up more campaign cash.   The  media  in Cleveland, Akron and Columbus tacking, as always,  to Republican candidates.  Inventive endorsements that  pardon their choices for glaring flaws.  Not a good election season all around.

A prime exhibit  was the odd word salad in which  the Beacon Journal endorsed  Republican Ohio House member Anthony DeVitis over his Democratic opponent, Paula Prentice, a  veteran Summit County Council member.

The paper opined that although the "editorial page agrees more often on policy matters"  with Prentice,  it  believed that DeVitis was a moderate (which he isn't) who might be able to influence the nutty Republican hoof-beaters in the legislature on key issues.  Fat chance.  The R's are mired so deeply under water that one could not reach them in a bathysphere. You'd think that people who write editorials would know that by now.

Then there is the bewitching  stuff  that both the Beacon Journal and Plain Dealer conjured up to make nice for Atty. Gen. Mike DeWine, a deeply entrenched social conservative on all counts.  Not that they agree with him on such matters as  women's issues, same-sex marriage, abortion, charter schools and such.  Nor spending taxpayer money charging off to other states to join those who share his gospel.

I've written several times that when you think of Mike DeWine, you think of his version of warm and fuzzy goodness. But it does work in editorial offices and on the stump even when he's scandalizing the idea of the Affordable Care Act with promises to get rid of it.

The disconnect between the attorney general's active policies and the papers' own year-round gospel  does make the friendly editorialists  uncomfortable and forces them to concede that Mike is a million-dollar pay-to-play artist.  A recent example is the word that he replaced a veteran debt collection agency with one that literally  walked into his office with the seal of approval of Summit County GOP boss Alex Arshinkoff, a former DeWine payroller,  and walked out with a lucrative contract.

And what did the  BJ say  about Mike's widely reported cookie jar  schemes?

 "No question, DeWine has stumbled at times," the editorial noted.  "He talked about a system for bringing transparency and accountability to awarding contracts, only to find himself struggling to explain a local episode that carried the odor of pay to  play."

Odor?  That alone would have qualified DeWine's Democratic   opponent, David Pepper,whom the paper credited with running a "pointed, vigorous and worthy [!]  campaign.

 The PD pattered over the same problem

These papers have a lot of transparency after  they sit down to make endorsements.   You have to have  quite a problem  as a Republican to lose their support.  Sadly, creative writing is one of their few remaining claims to relevance.

There's a big difference between white hat and white hard hat

Re-posted  from Plunderbund

Having declared Ed FitzGerald's gubernatorial campaign DOA on several occasions, the Plain Dealer  still persists in digging into  his distant past in the hope of handing the election to Gov. Kasich by acclimation. In less-polite circles, it's known as piling on.

There's never been any doubt that the PD, the voice of the city's controlling business and religious establishment, was on board with Republican  Kasich way  back when it endorsed him against Democratic incumbent Gov.Ted Strickland.  When I asked an influential source at the paper how they arrived at that decision, he gave me his raw  assessment:

"Kasich scares the shit out of me.  But Strickland never did anything for Cleveland."

 Oh. Another glimpse of Cleveland's fantasy of statehood?

 In today's moment, the contest is no longer about re-electing the governor.   Heavens, no!   It is about having their guy win by such a crushing margin that he can immediately set out to run for the White House. (Kasich denies interest in higher office  about any of his motives other than blistering his opponents in temper tantrums. Meantime, secretive big- money  committees are gathering to pay for his trip to Disney World.

 What a selling point in the heavy-footed swing state.  To suppose that the Blue Collar Kid would be the savior of the party that has lost two presidenticsl races to an African American, well, you might know how those things go, rather softly among his caterers in the state media.   .

So on Saturday,  there was PD politics writer Henry Gomez  talling us on front page that 15 years ago, FitzGerald  didn't mention any  traffic violations when he ran for a seat on Lakewood City Council.  Yes, FitzGerald should have. And in a race that might have been a dead heat, that could have rolled some eyes.

But. hey, what does it matter to be sniffing arournd for more flaws from 15 years ago?  And to have the Columbus politlcal writer writing the story with a Lakewood dateline.

From experience  I can suppose that the Republican leak machine is working overtime while the governor, in one of those white hard hats from the central casting stock room,   is appearing in TV commercials  with his delighted Smilies with a shovel to stress how many jobs he has created in Ohio. (When will he - or the media, for that matter - admit that whatever success he's enjoyed with the state economy can be immeasurably traced to the comeback around the country from the Bush recession?)

Careful, there, Guv.   Your right wing has long insisted that government doesn't create jobs. Even when the governor is decked out in a hard hat and flanked by a bunch of happy-go-lucky Republican achievers.

GOP convention in Cleveland? Credit Democrat FitzGerald

Re-Posted from Plunderbund 



Days in Northern Ohio have become much livelier in the heat of summer.  The past week or so, for example, has produced three tornadic events:  A real tornado in Medina County, LeBron James' epic decision to return to the Cavaliers,  and, of course, the Republican eruptive choice of Cleveland for its 2016 national convention.

So far, the GOP hasn't found a way to blame the tornado nor LeBron's flight from Florida - a key battleground state - on President Obama.   But Marco Rubio is doubtless still working on it  in James' case, including it in a new immigration reform package that will ship him back to Miami in cuffs.

The most interesting  response, however, is how the mainstream media  virtually ignored Cuyahoga County Executive Ed FitzGerald, the Democratic candidate for governor, in the symbiotic local effort to  lure all of those Republicans to the oft-maligned city on the lake.  The hometown paper, with one major exception, handed out huzzahs for the efforts by the convention bureau, Cleveland companies and the Cleveland 2016 RNC Host Committee, headed by Terry Egger, the PD's former publisher.

The Beacon Journal, on the other hand, delivered to its readers a puffy Page One story from the Washington Post that "affirmed the influence of Sen. Rob. Portman"  in the GOP's decision  under the headline "GOP's choice of Cleveland reflects power of Portman".   The Republican senator, the article said, "pushed for months for the city as the site". Hint:  Portman was again elevated as a potential presidential candidate.  For now, it couldn't hurt. Or could it?

(About presidential politics: The Columbus Dispatch, which appears to be torn between advancing Gov. Kasich or Portman as the paper's choice for the Oval Office, focussed on Kasich, satisfied  that the convention would be a perfect national stage to dramatize  the "revitalization and fiscal turnaround that Ohio's Republican governor, John Kasich has managed to pull off in a few short years...")

And as for Kasich himself, he had nothing to say at all to the Dispatch's  Joe Vardon who asked about FitzGerald's role.   Said the governor:  "That's a question - I'm not in the middle of that kind of question.  I have no answer to that right now."

That non-rsponse measures well against one of George W. Bush's when a reporter asked a question about a nominee:  " I would have to ask the questions...I haven't had a chance to ask the questioners the question they've been questioning."

And where was FitzGerald in the planning and rollout of the convention site?  It wasn't until veteran writer  Brent Larkin, who retired as the PD's editorial director five years ago, stepped up.

Summing up his column in the subhead over his commentary:  "Credit FitzGerald with leadership, vision in landing 2016 GOP convention."

Larkin noted that FitzGerald, with Positively Cleveland CEO Dave Gilbert as early as two years ago engaged in  planning for a convention proposal.  Wrote Larkin:

"And Republicans may  not like it, but FitzGerald, a Democrat,  deserves far more credit than any other elected official for the city landing  the GOP presidential nominating convention.  Anyone who tries to suggest  a public official other than FitzGerald is the father of this process is simply not telling the  truth."

Well, now.  Larkin's incisive observation certfainly bumps up against the PD's own editorial page think tank that recently devoted a full page to questioning  FitzGerald's  ''leadership".

Having worked  in the field with Larkin for years, I'll take his word for it.

Add another to the GOP list of rising stars

As I continue to explore the bright Republican firmament for "rising stars",  I am happy to report still another one as identified by McClatchy newspapers  in its coverage of the big conservative shindig in Maryland,  a.k.a. Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) convention.  It is Sen.Tim Scott of South Carolina, who was appointed recently to fill the seat of Jim DeMint, who departed to head the Heritage Foundation.

Scott made it to the not-so-exclusive  Rising Star column as the party's first black senator since Reconstruction.  He thus joins other media-designated alleged upwardly mobile luminaries as Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Scott Walker, John Kasich and Jeb Bush's son, George Prescott Bush. (I hope I got G.P.'s name right.  There are so many Bushes demanding our attention that I get mixed up at times.)

Missing from the list is  ex-Sen. Scott Brown, who lost in November and is now a lobbyist.  A senator with an ex in front his title is immediately banished from the GOP's distinguished wish list.  Also missing is Tim Tebow, whose stardom was rising until he was flattened a few times with the New York Jets.  Now, he is afforded the backup possibility of a "window of opportunity" by the sports media inasmuch as  the team's starting quarterback is also a falling star.

You can forget Sarah Palin and Donald Trump, too. They have both worked hard at being rising stars and neither ever really  got off the ground. I'll keep you posted,

Kasich: Repent "liberal nihilists" who oppose me

I

There are days when it's  hard to separate Gov. Kasich from
Elmer Gantry.  That's when he berates inquiring reporters and critics in general about a lawsuit filed by ProgressOhio against  his economic development JobsOhio plan.

To a question asked by Gongwer News about the interest rates on the bonds that would pay for his privatization plan, it wasn't enough for the governor to refer to "liberal nihilists"  - which doubtless sent some of his own people to their dictionaries.  He became even testier  and warned that his critics were "going to have to answer to a much higher power than me."

Well, now.  For those of us who have been led to believe that there is no higher power than Kasich, this came as a revelation. As Plunderbund helpfully recalled,  it was the same pulpeteering Kasich who was quoted in the New York Times back in September as believing  that he had been sent by God to save the  state.

Why do Republican pols  consistently play the God card and say things like that as though they are so insecure about going it alone?  One comes quickly to mind: Sarah Palin, and where is she today?  

If I were to be a candidate against the governor the first words out of my mouth would be that I had also talked to God and  He reassured me that the governor had shamefully quoted Him out of context.

With Cordray, GOP haste could make waste

Irony can always find a home in the political world.  When, for example, Republicans on Capitol Hill determinedly stalled President Obama's nomination of  Harvard Law School professor Elizabeth Warren as director of the new U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau,  she finally said, "To hell with it" and went off to Massachusetts to run for the U.S.Senate.

She defeated Scott Brown, the Republican incumbent, which, to the GOP's dismay,  cost it  a seat.  Do you think that in retrospect it would reconsider the trade-off that produced such  unintended consequences?

That Potomac vignette of the GOP's mulish  rejection of Warren could play out with a different setting this year.  The ruling by the all-Republican  three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals  disqualifying Obama's three appointments  to the National Labor Relations Board will be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.  But some observers  are saying that it could also affect former Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray's recess  appointment  to the consumer's group after another Republican blockade on Capitol Hill.

If so, in the scheme of things, he would be without a job. It might even encourage him to return to Ohio to challenge Gov. Kasich's re-election bid.  Cordray is a name mentioned in most recaps of the potential Democratic field and, so the reasoning goes, could be the strongest tie-breaker  within his party's field.

I'd say that in the Republicans'  haste  to say no- no- no, they're getting somewhat careless these days  about their own welfare. It has often been shown that haste makes waste.

Note:  My column on the Columbus Dispatch travelogues covering  Kasich in Davos has been posted on Plunderbund

Kasich sees Adelson during visiting hours

Well, the pilgrimage has resumed to the knees of Sheldon Adelson, the impossibly wealthy  Las Vegas casino baron.  It has been reported that even Ohio Gov. John Kasich, hoping for a fast $$$ launch of  his reelection campaign, visited Adelson recently so that everybody on Kasich's side will soon be on a first-name basis with  everyone in the Adelson family.

For political practitioners, it hasn't gone unnoticed that Adelson dropped $150  million into  Mitt Romney's collection plate and millions more to Republican candidates that included another loser, Newt Gingrich.   But when you're worth many billions and are that generous, who's counting anyway?

So far, Adelson's beneficiaries haven't been that fortunate on Election Day.  He may have to reserve some good fortune for his own  challenge by the Feds who are looking into his casino enterprises in Asia.  Undeterred, Adelson  is said to be prepared to unload another $100 million on 2014 midterm House and Senate candidates who could do him some good.  Just one more way for Adelson to shoot craps these days after a bad night at the table.

The speculation continues: Portman? Kasich?

In Shakespeare's Hamlet, the long-suffering protagonist laments to his friend Horatio that his mother remarried so quickly after his father's death that the leftover "funeral bak'd meats" for his father's wake  were  served at his mother's wedding.  

Methinks there  is something Shakespearean  in the rush of speculation in the  wake of Mitt Romney's political death last week about what leftovers  will seek to succeed  him  four years hence. Alas, politics is forever impatient and doesn't provide for pauses or vacuums.

Amid all of the speculation, a case  in point arrived via the Columbus Dispatch that centered on an Ohio dream candidate featuring either leftover  Sen. Rob Portman or  Gov. John Kasich at the top of the heap.

Or as the Dispatch's Jack Torry wrote on Sunday:

"Less than one week after President Barack Obama defeated Mitt romney,  Kasich and Portman are being talked about as serious candidates in 2016.  If they run, they could provide that most prominent moment for Ohio politics since 1920, when Republican Warren. G. Harding of Marion defeated Democrat James Cox of Dayton for the  Presidency."

The article even quotes John Brabender, a senior advisor to  Rick Santorum's dead-end campaign (!),  as describing both guys as "certainly credible."  Some other Republicans gave pro-forma applause to both Ohioans.  That much alone could get the juice  flowing.  Are you ready for it, Iowa?

Oh, about Harding... He was dead-set against taxes, opposed America's entrance into the League of Nations and on other matters raised the generic Republican flag.   Some historians also suggested that his rise was clearly aided by the fact that he very much looked like a president.

Some familiar?  

News from the battlefield

     FROM THE POST-ELECTION LEFTOVERS:

There's nothing that would snap our brief euphoric holiday from the presidential election more than the  report in the Columbus Dispatch that Gov. Kasich was asked at a news conference whether he would consider running for president. Well, as the Dispatch, Kasich's adulatory voice in the capital city, recorded his response:

"I haven't announced this yet but I have full intentions of running for re-election and I have a great job here as the  governor."

Sort of a non-denial denial, don't you think?   At least that's how it was interpreted down there with the paper noting: "He didn't rule it out."

Good grief!

                                                         * * * * *

We clipped and saved Glenn Beck's pre-election communication with God in setting the stage for a presumed President Romney: "I believe Mr. Romney prays on his knees every day.  I believe he is being guided [and his election Tuesday] would be a sign from God."  Shouldn't Beck have checked first with Nate Silver?

                                                        * * * * *

The Economist recently quoted the late  Ronald Reagan's view of Latinos thusly:

"Latinos are Republicans," Ronald Reagan is supposed to have said.   "They still don't know it yet."

Update to the iconic Gipper after the Latinos massive turnout for President Obama on
Tuesday:  They still don't.

                                                      * * * * *
 The conservative gurus, apparently carried away by wishful thoughts,  simply crashed in  their predictions.  George Will forecast a 321-217 electoral vote victory for Romney.  And alleged  analyst Dick Morris predicted a landslide for Mitt.  For high-paid talking heads, this was worse than embarrassing.  It might even be considered a defining moment for their political insights.


                                                       * * * * *
   
Finally, a picture is worth...


   

Kasich lauded by Mitt: Not a lie if he believes it?

 Romney spent a little time in Cincinnati on Saturday, but it was long enough to tell the biggest fib of his campaign.  Maybe still euphoric over his friendly reception in Tampa, Mitt told a crowd in the Union Terminal train station that  unlike President Obama,  Ohio Gov. John Kasich knows how to create jobs. He said:

"This is a great state, and you've got a great governor in John Kasich.  He's showing the president - if he'd only listen - how to create jobs."

You'll be hearing a lot of that from the Romney forces to Election Day and, if true, it could be quite effective. But quite the opposite is true.   You probably know by now that the biggest help in Ohio's economy came from  the auto industry bail-out that Romney and Kasich opposed.  Do you recall Mitt's remedy for the ailing industry:  Let Detroit  go bankrupt.

Romney is given to saying nutty things, like his solution to immigration:  Self-deportation.  Or his cowardly reponse to Rush Limbaugh's reference to Sandra Fluke as a slut.  "That's not the language I would have u ded," Mitt meekly demurred.

All over the state, beginning with the recovery of a stricken area like Youngstown, there is growth.  GM, an industrial giant targeted for bankruptcy by Romney, has already announced it will build the 2015 Chevrolet Cruze there. And what about the smaller companies in the chain  that will now be able to supply a healthier auto industry?

I once thought that Mitt and  his Wingman,  Paul Ryan, were making all of  this up to win an election.  But now I keep recalling George Costanza's profound words on Seinfeld:

"It's not a lie if you believe it."

Mitt believes it.  That should worry all of us more than his flagrant  lies.