It's Not Like If Trump Disappeared Everything Would Be Hunky-Dory With The GOP

Early Monday morning, the Wall Street Journal warned that Trump's government shutdown "is curtailing infrastructure projects, food-processing inspections and economic data used by Wall Street. But on a more micro level, it is showing signs of disrupting commerce as hundreds of thousands of federal workers missed out on their first payday of the closure late last week... While the economic gashes aren’t enough to derail the recovery, now in its 10th year, they appear to be at least temporarily diminishing the vigor of an expansion that was already projected to slow in 2019. Output is now expected to grow at a 2.2% pace in the first quarter, less than an estimated 3.1% growth recorded in 2018." A couple of hours later the Washington Post reported that Republicans are worried that the shutdown is doing the party some harm and is just one manifestation of "the difficult balancing act Senate Republicans will probably face over the next two years, trapped between a mercurial GOP president and an emboldened new House Democratic majority."

The Bulwark, a new neocon website, looked at it from a different perspective, running a throw-away piece calling for their readers to get ready for the Trump primary!. The list 5 who might take up the call: Jeff Flake (DEFCON 5), Nikki Haley (DEFCON 2), Jim Mattis (DEFCON 1), Mitt Romney (DEFCON 3) and Jon Kasich (DEFCON 4). "If Mattis were to run," wrote Jonathan Last, "it would be an existential threat to Trump because he would run not as an anti-Trumpite, but as a whistleblower. The message would be: I served this president. I was on the inside. I know what it looks like. And he’s not fit for office. It’s one thing to have some undersecretary of agriculture making that argument. Having it come from a beloved general who is regarded as one of the great military minds of his generation? Yikes." He's considerably less concerned by a Kasich challenge:

Funnily enough, Kasich probably helped Trump in 2016 by hanging around in the primaries and siphoning off anti-Trump votes that otherwise could have consolidated around Ted Cruz.

Also funnily enough, Kasich’s brand of centrist reform-ish conservatism is not all that far from Trump’s. (Never forget that Trump campaigned on leaving Social Security and Medicare untouched and said that repealing Obamacare the way Cruz wanted to would leave people “dying in the streets.”)

The difference, of course, is attitudinal. Kasich is laid-back and genial, so people take his centrism for cuckitude. Trump is crude and aggressive, so people take his centrism as True ConservatismTM.

As such, Kasich is probably the least-threatening mainstream challenger for Trump. By running to Trump’s left as an anti-Trumper, Kasich wouldn’t put any of Trump’s base in play. And many of the potential Kasich supporters may have already fled the GOP. So why have him this high on our list? Because he’s the most likely to actually run.

Most likely for sure. And Last may or may not have already read Kasich's Monday morning dire OpEd in USA Today, Republican Party is mired in the 1950s and ignores today's America at its peril, when he wrote that. Kasich doesn't seem to have much regard for the movers and shakers of his own party, earning them that they need to stop bitching and start doing stuff for people.

It’s a new year and almost two decades into a new century, yet so much about American life and our political leadership-- notably in my own Republican Party-- seems stuck in the 1950s. While nearly every aspect of the world around us has been changing, sometimes with breakneck speed, and while the complexion and complexities of our demographics have shifted so dramatically, those who fancy themselves as leaders are plodding far behind the march of time. Sadly, too many Americans are content to plod along with them.

Perhaps they think denial is protection from the change that swirls around them. No doubt they’re threatened by the new diversity of voices that have joined the public chorus, by the long-ignored problems that a new generation wants to solve, by an unsettled world that no longer follows America’s lead. But they’ve learned absolutely nothing from their skunking in the midterm elections. They didn’t watch, or chose to ignore, the new Congress being sworn in the other day. It was a more energetic, diverse and self-assured group than those chambers have seen before.

But ignoring change like that won’t stop it. And failing to find solutions to our problems will only lead to greater challenges down the road. A case in point: Opponents of Obamacare ask how such a thing came to be, oblivious to the fact that their own inaction is to blame. By ignoring giant holes in America’s health care system and failing to find a ways to fix them with hard work and compromise, they watched that vacuum filled with a behemoth they deplore.

Yet people like these at all levels of government find themselves caught on the same, well-worn treadmill time and again. By failing to come up with fresh ideas and real solutions for our most vexing problems, congressional Republicans, the White House and other power structures in Washington let those problems fester or reluctantly patch them up with half-baked solutions that only make things worse. That same change-ignoring inertia holds back progress in our states.

Think of the problems that cry out for solutions: health care, immigration, deficits and debt, income inequality, urban violence, drugs, climate and environment, free trade, prescription costs, infrastructure decay, cybersecurity, education and workforce readiness, student debt… how many pages do I have to go on?

These aren’t new problems, but many have grown worse. And none can be ignored any longer in a younger, more diverse and more demanding America that’s increasingly impatient with the old way of thinking. This emerging leadership won’t be put off, ignored or disenfranchised, but I’m confident that they will be open to new ideas and the kind of commonsense approaches that truly solve problems-- and solve them for all Americans, not just a privileged few.

In this changing world, successful leaders must look each problem squarely in the eye, listen to their customers, and realize how dramatically those customers have changed. No one will survive by practicing politics the way Sears or RadioShack practiced retail, stuck in the 1950s while the world moved on with Amazon, Uber and others who have broken the mold. For Republicans, this means breaking their own self-made mold of being naysayers instead of doers. It means designing market-driven, center-right solutions that actually solve problems while revealing their compassion.

Kasich, now an ex-governor, just signed with CNN as a senior political commentator (expect a Trumpanzee rant within 24 hours) and just hired United Talent Agency to represent him. The UTA press release, distributed Monday quotes Kasich saying he's excited to keep his voice active "across the world" and to share his experiences and observations "to help improve the lives of others." So will he run as a Republican or as an independent? UTA says it will "help Kasich navigate the next phase of his career in civic engagement, by continuing to inspire audiences to lead purpose-driven lives of service."

Guess who!