It's Friday Politics!

It's Friday and I can't help but notice I've mostly focused on Politics as opposed to, well, anything else.  Oh well.  Politics is a big thing, and I'm too much of a team player to run to the hills and let the world blow itself up.  Not that avoiding belonging to parties is itself a problem.  It isn't.  There can be very noble and virtuous reasons to avoid party affiliation.  There can also be nasty ones.  Just like belonging to a party.  Like anything, it's what's in our minds and hearts that ultimately determines the right or wrong of belonging or not belonging.

So it's politics Friday.  Someday I might make Fridays movie review day.  I don't know.  But today, especially after last night's debate, I have to say goodbye to Kasich.  Don't get me wrong.  I adore Kasich.  I think he is a fine man, and a good politician, and he has been a good governor.  I've followed him ever since he came and spoke at our high school graduation when I was a freshman (I was in the concert band, so I attended every graduation).  That impressed me.  We were a small farming school with about 400 kids in the entire school. 

So I was proud to watch him grow over the years.  I was proud of him in the 90s.  I supported his early bid in 2000.  That is why I joined the Republican Party, to support him.  I never was a fan of Bush, and felt Bush was merely an establishment puppet plowing forward on the weight of his fame and fortune.  I liked Kasich on Fox, because he was a breath of fresh air in the growing rancor and childish scream-fests that came to define cable news.

And as a governor, he's done well.  Not everything I would have liked, but I'm from old school parents who don't think a candidate has to be all about me.  Things are better in Ohio.  Though I must admit, the health care reform he keeps mentioning has either not been put into motion yet (which means he can't say if it will succeed), or it has been put into effect and hasn't done a damn thing to help my family.  Either way, I don't feel the love when I hear him talk about how he will solve the problem. 

But his answer to the question of religious liberty last night simply cemented my biggest concern I've had for Kasich since I first heard the question posed.  In short, it was nothing other than 'liberalism is now the law of the land, deal with it.'  Well John, that's not what I want.  The Left has made it clear it doesn't have a shred of desire to tolerate non-conformity.  Even without total power and control, it is already making it nigh on impossible to function in our society without keeping any non-liberal views in the closet.  And that's without total power.  By your answer Mr. Kasich, there is no reason to believe you will thwart the juggernaut.  If liberals manage to make it a crime to be non-liberal, you'll merely throw up your hands and say 'it's the law of the land.'

If that's how you approach something as fundamental as the First Amendment, then how in the hell am I supposed to think you'll approach anything else that way?  How will you deal with ISIS? With Putin?  With China?  I love that fact that you are a wonderful person.  I love that you have turned your campaign into the Hug Crusade.  I really do.  I think seeing a major national figure concerning yourself with the day to day lives of people is a wonderful thing.  I admire you, and hope you continue your term as governor.  But I simply can't support a person who is willing to say, "Dave, I understand you're not a liberal and it's now illegal to not be liberal, but you're just going to have to accept it and move on."  Nope.  Not yet.  The battle doesn't have to be lost just yet.