Governor Kasich Pleased with Debate Performance

Governor Kasich was in a good move after his appearance in the Republican presidential debate at the Q.   He barely made the top 10 list to be in the prime time Fox News event.  But he was ebullient after the event in the “spin room.”  More from Ideastream’s Mark Urycki..

Almost all the Big 10 field tried to match Donald Trump’s tough talk on the issues last night.   Kasich stood apart as the compassionate conservative.  He defended his decision to expanding Medicaid under Obamacare. 

“President Reagan expanded Medicaid three or 4 times.  Secondly, I had an opportunity to bring resources back to Ohio to do what? To treat the mentally ill, 10,000 of them sit in our prisons.”  

Kasich passed on a chance to attack the front runner, saying Trump is hitting a nerve with people.  He also talked about helping the poor and sounded almost liberal.

“I just went to a wedding of a friend of mine who happens to be gay.” 

Kasich had the audience cheering when he pivoted on gay marriage to supporting his daughters if they were gay.  Kasich took every chance to explain who he was, repeating several times that his dad was a mailman and that he was responsible for balancing the federal budget during the Clinton administration.

“And now I’m the governor of Ohio and I inherited a state that was on the brink of dying.      And we’ve turned it all around with jobs and balanced budgets and rising credit and tax cuts and the state is unified and people have hope again in Ohio.” 

Afterwards he had a big smile on his face when he told reporters he was “blowing up” on Twitter

“Each one of these is an important step to the nomination and I’m just really pleased.”

The Governor says he is heading next to the Iowa State Fair.