Ohio Gov. John Kasich Uses Wrong Method to Make Right Choice

Governor John Kasich (R), has done an end-around Ohio's Republican dominated legislature in order to expand Medicaid in his state.  

Earlier this year, Ohio's General Assembly voted against expanding Medicaid as part of the roll out of the Affordable Care Act.  After seeing the Tea Party federal government shutdown fail and with public opinion of the ACA slowly rising, Mr. Kasich, who has made many decisions in his tenure that have been highly unpopular with Democratic voters and who is facing a re-election bid next year, then asked the Ohio Controlling Board, a separate legislative entity that is charged with approving agency spending requests, to vote on the issue.   On October 21, this seven member panel voted in favor of adding 275,000 poor and uninsured Ohioans to their Medicaid roster.

Two-thirds of Republican members of the legislature have signed a letter of protest stating that they question Mr. Kasich's move on legal and constitutional grounds and plan to file a suit with the state court to stop the expansion.  In light of Mr. Kasich's questionable move, Republicans in the General Assembly and across the state have voiced their opposition to Mr. Kasich's re-election bid.

what eye thynk:   Governor John Kasich, faced with a losing Tea Party cause and looking to keep his job in 2014, (he won the governorship by only 2 points in 2010), did the right thing, but in a wrong--and possibly illegal--way.  So now, Ohio's Medicaid expansion will be put on hold while a costly suit makes its way through the Ohio court system, leaving Ohio's poor with no clear answer to their health insurance status next year.

Republicans can't seem to keep from shooting themselves in the foot even when they're taking the moral high ground. 

While I applaud Mr. Kasich's decision to back Ohio's Medicaid expansion, I have to question why he seems to believe that Ohio's State Constitution doesn't apply to him. Seven other Republican dominated state legislatures have been convinced by their Republican governors to expand Medicaid without resorting to backdoor tactics.  Mr. Kasich chose, instead, to force his (morally and financially correct) decision on the state without benefit of Ohio law.

I guess that's what comes from drinking the Republican messianic Kool-aid.