Is there anything good about being "conservative?"

Nah, you’re gonna have to look it up for yourself. At one point in the past I posted the detailed budget info on these forums, but digging it up was a pain and I don’t feel like digging it up again. You might be able to find it in some old post on these forums though.

In terms of your second question… I just gave you an example. A couple, actually, in that he also expanded Medicaid which the GOP establishment screamed bloody murder about. I mean, what exactly is your goal here? You asked for where he differed from the current GOP, I gave you examples. It seems kind of silly for you to demand some kind of exhaustive list.

I don’t think you gave me an example. Not a single GOP member of Congress is in a position to vote on Medicaid expansion in Ohio, so I don’t really see how you can use that action to contrast the two. I’m asking, as a practical matter, how Kasich would differ from other GOP politicians at the national level. I mean, Kasich even supported McConnell’s Supreme Court seat grab. I’m just not seeing him as any different politically than the center of the GOP.

Then I don’t think anything I give you will be accepted as an example.

Well, if you won’t try, that’s more or less on you. It ought to be simple to point at a particular piece of non-conservative GOP insanity and say ‘Kasich would go this way instead’. Agreeing to take Federal money to benefit his constituents is easy. Would he have voted for the ACA, that’s the question. Would he have voted to repeal the ACA, that’s another.

It may be easy but a lot of Republican governors refused anyway. On the other hand, I find Kasich to be by and large bog standard GOP. The difference is more in form rather than substance.

Agree with that.

It was universally panned by the GOP.
So no, it was not easy. He was attacked by his party for doing it.

His expansion of social assistance for homeless and mentally ill was not something that was supported by the GOP at large. It’s exactly the kind of thing that they generally oppose. And yet he supported it not only because it was ethical and moral, but because it saved money overall.

And I gave you an example of him literally vetoing stuff from his own party in Ohio’s budget. I mean, you are essentially asking, “But what did he do in Congress, when he was’t in Congress and was instead Ohio’s governor? What he did in Ohio doesn’t count.”

I think Kasich is absolutely a conservative… but we aren’t arguing that he’s not. We’re arguing why the GOP at large is no longer conservative.

And there, we see things like Kasich ACTUALLY balancing budgets, while the GOP at large just talks about doing it, while instead blowing up the deficit.

Not so.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/12/15/three-republican-governors-have-now-endorsed-the-medicaid-expansion-since-the-midterms/?utm_term=.89a38ab2824b

The second link is from 2018. Things have changed.

I don’t thing that’s a good-faith objection. Eleven GOP governors accepted the Medicaid expansion.

https://www.npr.org/2017/01/23/510823789/meet-the-republican-governors-who-dont-want-to-repeal-all-of-obamacare

How about this: If Kasich is a true conservative despite his other positions because he crafted a balanced budget bill, then Clinton is a true conservative despite his other positions because he signed that balanced budget bill. Fair?

Some things to remember about balanced budgets:

  • 43 states require the governor to balance the budget by law, so you should never be too impressed when a state governor brags about balancing the budget (though that never stops them from bragging about it anyway.)
  • Balancing the Federal budget in the wake of the end of the Cold War was pretty much a no-brainer.
  • Balancing a budget is not, in and of itself, a virtuous act. Balancing a budget during a recession, for example, would be an act of folly (not that Kasich did that.) You could also balance a budget by cutting spending on pensions and health care by a lot, while simultaneously increasing kickbacks to your cronies, only by somewhat less.

And this last is of course the Republicans’ long term plan: first give massive tax cuts to the rich (already done,) blow a massive hole in the budget, then shake their heads sadly and say, “Obviously, the only way we can fix this terrible problem is ‘entitlements reform,’” their euphemism for cutting Medicare and Social Security. So cash grab for the rich, go die on the streets for everyone else.

But what about Kasich? He has criticized the “blow a hole in the budget” step but - hey, guess what? - is totally on board with the rest of the plan and is already shaking his head sadly and talking about ‘entitlements reform’, not reverting the handouts to the rich, as the solution to the budget problem the GOP has caused.

So, in other words: Kasich is a standard modern Republican, just using the politics of the moment to make himself look ‘reasonable’ while keeping his eyes on the GOP grand prize of screwing over most of the country.

For me, being “conservative” theoretically avoids things like Greece and Italy. Where politicians just promise money and benefits to everyone, to the point where the economy cannot keep up, and disaster results.

I am somewhat of a fiscal conservative, social liberal (I know, that seems to be so popular on the internet, but then no one votes that way in real life, or perhaps the issue is that there are no viable candidates). I would say that I think I tend to be a little more compassionate than most conservatives, in that I believe that plenty of people are disadvantaged, poor, etc., and while perhaps they could help themselves a little more, at the same time, I do not believe they are all just some kind of freeloaders living off “the system.” People have real problems, and I do believe that government should try to help (without bankrupting the system, in which case there is no further ability to help - it’s kind of like the old self-help mantra of "first you have to put on your own oxygen mask - I think the government has to be able to maintain itself and be economically viable, as ending up like Venezuela isn’t going to help our poor).

The modern Republican party to me seems the worst of all worlds. They are in no way fiscally conservative. Taxes are not really “cut,” they’re sliced and diced to help the rich and special interests. Spending is grossly out of control (as is the debt and deficit), but we’ll look at cutting aid to the poor before we’ll look at buying one less fighter jet.

At the same time, while they are fiscally spendthrifts, they are for some reason socially curmudgeonly and cruel. I have no idea why purported Republicans (who here I think are predominantly Christians) are more obsessed with not giving cakes to gay people than they are helping the poor. Jesus washed feet and fed the masses. He didn’t rant about gays.

No, not really, because some of us actually remember what happened during the 90’s when the GOP balanced the budget. That wasn’t Clinton’s budget. Clinton submitted 5 OTHER budgets. Clinton fought the GOP tooth and nail on their budget. He hated that budget, saying that their cuts were going to be disastrous.

Some context from 1995:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1995/12/18/fiscal-fight-seen-as-political-risk-deal-as-perhaps-more-damaging/bf0ae860-81fc-48ef-93ca-7aeeaa3e2bb0/?utm_term=.bd97d60b82ad

Even GOP leaders agree that Clinton won that first skirmish in political terms – by portraying himself as the defender of Medicare, Medicaid, school aid and the environment against what he called an “extremist” agenda of GOP spending cuts.

Regardless, that’s somewhat moot for the purposes of this conversation because…

A thing to remember about the context of this conversation:
The topic was not the merits of those acts, it was a contrast between Kasich’s demonstrated ability to actually do what he said he’d do, compared to the GOP saying they care about the budget while not actually caring about it at all when they are in power.

THAT was the point of the conversation. This isn’t about making you guys on the far left think it’s good. You aren’t going to suddenly think conservatism is good. But there is nonetheless a contrast between actually believing in conservative things, and just saying you do, which is where the GOP is now.

Granting your point about the balanced budget - for the sake of argument - it seems to be the only distinction between Kasich and his colleagues you’re willing to point to. In reality, it isn’t even that, since Kasich hardly passed that bill with his one single solo vote. But never mind that - is that the measure of a true conservative, that and nothing else?

Just a comment to endorse what HumanTon wrote. I agree with it entirely.

Please note: this is NOT specific to Kasich, just a general question

Can I ask why balancing a budget is considered fiscally conservative? It just strikes me as frugal.

Unless I’m horribly wrong, fiscally liberal means big government, big budget. Fiscally conservative means little government, little budget. Balancing seems to have nothing to do with it (balanced budgets can be huge or tiny, after all).

I think it would be hard to find any example of conservatives in power who shrunk the size of government. Reagan didn’t. Neither of the Bushes did. In practice, conservatives don’t seem to want smaller government. They want big government focused on the things they like rather than the things they don’t like.

Oh, Kasich wasn’t the only conservative in the 90’s. But I’m not contrasting him against other GOP members THEN. I’m contrasting him against other GOP members NOW.

I think that a lot of the stuff you described is in fact a reasonable description of conservative views. Being against abortion, for instance, is indeed a traditionally conservative viewpoint. By all accounts, Kasich is fairly traditional when it comes to social conservatism. Although I suppose that even there, most of the GOP now is entirely hypocritical in regard to this, where they support Trump who is objectively NOT any of the things that the social conservatives support. So again, it may come down to Kasich being different from them in that he actually opposed Trump, since Trump is such a disgusting piece of trash, whereas many GOP christian conservatives just abandoned all of their principles entirely, because of… reasons?

It’s economic conservatism where the GOP has really gone of the rails though, where they don’t really care about spending. They don’t care about free trade. They don’t care about seemingly anything anymore. They’re just Trump’s shills.

I would tend to agree, that it’s simply good policy. However, it is definitely a departure from the far left. Historically, fiscal responsibility used to be something that the GOP cared about, but this hasn’t been the case for a while now.

This is true, to an extent. The issue tends to arise in that it’s harder to just increase revenue for the government. You can’t just jack up taxes and get a proportional increase in revenue, because doing so can have a negative impact on the economy. Also, politically, jacking up taxes for the middle class is something that most Democrats don’t want to touch, because most normal folks don’t want to pay more taxes.

There have been folks in this forum on the left who have consistently argued that deficit spending literally does not matter at all.

Count me as one of them. When did we pay off the money we borrowed for WW2? The surprising answer is we never did, and growth turned it into a rounding error.

That’s what I don’t get. With the exception of having once drafted a balanced budget bill, Kasich is politically identical to his GOP colleagues. And Trump, for his part, seems to be advancing their agenda: Tax cuts for the wealthy, threats to cut entitlements, plans to eliminate departments in the government, outsourcing of enforcement to the industries that are supposed to be enforced, appointments to the judiciary and to federal offices designed to advance long-term conservative goals. Yet you say that Trump isn’t a conservative, and Kasich’s colleagues aren’t conservatives either. The only distinction seems to be balancing a budget. That’s a weird definition of conservative.