New York Times editorial board deals fatal blow to Kasich's campaign

I seriously wondered if John Kasich would actually tout an endorsement from the New York Times as a positive thing, as if that was likely to get him votes in a Republican primary. Yep. I suppose when you're getting no traction whatsoever, you're going to feel the need to run with whatever you've got. Newspaper endorsements have almost no influence whatsoever on how people vote, but I suppose a bottom-feeder candidate like Kasich might think it at least gives him cred as a serious candidate - although in this case I'm not so sure primary voters or Republican caucus-goers would agree. Getting endorsed by the New York Times is like having Bernie Sanders say you're the kind of guy he'd like to run against. Gee, thanks. That'll really help. I'm not even sure why a paper as liberal as the Times bothers to endorse in a Republican primary, since it's guaranteed to be the most tepid of endorsements, and indeed, they spent the majority of it ripping on the other candidates before finally damning Kasich with this faint praise:

---

Gov. John Kasich of Ohio, though a distinct underdog, is the only plausible choice for Republicans tired of the extremism and inexperience on display in this race. And Mr. Kasich is no moderate. As governor, he’s gone after public-sector unions, fought to limit abortion rights and opposed same-sex marriage. Still, as a veteran of partisan fights and bipartisan deals during nearly two decades in the House, he has been capable of compromise and believes in the ability of government to improve lives. He favors a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, and he speaks of government’s duty to protect the poor, the mentally ill and others “in the shadows.” While Republicans in Congress tried more than 60 times to kill Obamacare, Mr. Kasich did an end-run around Ohio’s Republican Legislature to secure a $13 billion Medicaid expansion to cover more people in his state. “I am so tired of my colleagues out here on the stage spending all their time talking about Barack Obama,” he told a town hall crowd in New Hampshire. “His term is over.” Mr. Kasich said recently that he had “raised the bar in this election. I’ve talked about hope and the future and positive things.” In this race, how rare that is.

Got that, GOP primary voters? Kasich is pro-amnesty, helped expand ObamaCare and doesn't like it when his fellow candidates criticize Obama. Clearly you're going to be falling all over yourselves to nominate him now that you know this.

---

---

Even less noteworthy was the Times' bootlicking endorsement of Hillary, which is about 3,532,861 times longer than the one for Kasich, and glosses over her corruption and dishonesty almost entirely - devoting less than a full sentence to the e-mail scandal for which she is under FBI investigation, and ignoring the Clinton Foundation and Hillary's other scandals entirely. But that's what you should expect of a newspaper that functions as little more than the Democratic Party house organ. Back to Kasich, sure, he mentions the endorsement on his web site - along with that of the liberal Boston Globe and a bunch of other liberal newspapers - but it's hard to imagine him actually touting it on the stump. Then again, Kasich's entire campaign has been little more than a big middle finger to the Republican base, so hey, why not? He seems less interested in getting votes than he is in making some sort of point about how he doesn't like the present nature of the conservative base. That's his right, of course, and maybe it will earn him the admiration of "no-labels" types and speaking engagements in Davos and Aspen. But an endorsement from the New York Times is certainly not going to earn him any Republican votes, and one can only imagine how loud the boos would be if he ever bragged about it to a crowd of real Republican voters. I have to think he wouldn't, but when you've got nothing else, who knows?

---