Why Kasich Flopped
He has no one to blame but himself for his failure to snap up foreign-policy moderates.
One of the surprising things about the primary election cycle is that neither Trump nor Sanders were punished at all by voters for challenging the bipartisan hawkish consensus which now governs Washington. In Kasich’s bid to be the reasonable guy in the room, he ignored foreign policy, or actually showed himself to be just as ready to strike belligerent poses as Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, and Lindsey Graham. Given the chance to be “defiant left of center,” he passed.
.. Kasich was asked who seemed like an exemplary secretary of state who might guide his thinking. He mentioned Jim Baker. I thought this might have been simply the reflex of a tired candidate coming out with the name of the secretary of state he actually knew; and that Kasich was somehow unaware that Baker was a kind of demon figure for the neoconservatives for trying to push Israel towards peace with the Palestinians. But no, it seemed the remark was fairly intentional.
.. I hoped that the remark might arise later in the campaign—perhaps become a vehicle for a Kasich defense of George H.W. Bush’s “realist” foreign policy, and show Kasich in healthy contrast to Graham, Cruz, and Rubio who spout only neocon-approved positions.
.. But Kasich didn’t see it that way. Instead, on the debate stage, surprising belligerence came from Kasich: “punch Putin in the nose” and “arm the Ukrainians” were his most notable utterances. In other words, risk war with Russia over Ukraine. One wonders what Baker would have thought of this.