Kasich's Gamble With America's Future

Leaving behind the policy merits of SB 5, Governor Kasich is making the gamble of his political life that may affect the national political scene for the next several years. Going into this winter, momentum at the national level clearly belonged to the Republicans. The abuse of power and sheer disregard for the will of the American people exhibited by the Democrats propelled them right into the muck in one of the biggest political losses in recent history. Left to stand by itself, this momentum was sufficient to carry over to the 2012 election in which the Republicans could retake the Senate and Presidency. It could be the political stunner of the millennium, relegating the Democrats to minority status for the next twenty years.

Enter Wisconsin and Ohio and the very public fight with the public employees unions. Both of these states have huge Republican majorities in the legislatures with Republican governors that aren’t afraid to use them. And use them they are pushing forward to effectively neuter these unions into irrelevance.

Elections have consequences, and both candidates clearly indicated that the end of public employee collective bargaining would be a priority in their administrations. But just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should.

Nothing motivates a constituency like defeat. The success of the Tea Party movement is an example as it reacted to the health care reform act in ways unprecedented in our history. Never before has the nation seen a grass roots movement surface so quickly with absolutely no central leadership. However like all such movements, there are still a fair amount of true believers still around and doing a great job, but the fringe of the group falls off as the motivation for the movement wanes. With grass roots movements, success often spells the end of the mass appeal of the movement. The Tea Party has been successful, no doubt about it.

But that momentum has shifted to the unions, and they are suffering what can be described as nothing less than humiliation at the hands of Republican legislators and governors. Not that turn around isn’t fair play. The Dems did the same thing in Washington before the Republicans took over the House.

Unfortunately for the Republicans, the motivation for revenge is now with the unions, who will continue to enjoy energetic members, strong political know how, and unlimited amounts of money…in states that matter in the 2012 Presidential election.

Ohio in particular is the prize. No Republican has won the White House without Ohio. Kasich himself won the governorship with a 2 point margin. There is a strong chance that a referendum on repealing SB 5 will be on the 2012 ballot jeapordizing an almost sure Ohio victory for the Republican Presidential candidate in a wave in motivated union and Democratic voters out for revenge. What is he thinking?

This only goes to show that good policy does not always make for good politics. In the case of SB 5, Kasich could have taken a more surgical approach to the problem. He chose not to, and ended up not only poking the sleeping union lion, but alienated some southwest Ohio Republicans with a fair measure of union constituency. He even removed one Republican from the Senate Committee marking up the bill because he was going to vote against it.

Add to the mix that this is a bad bill. Just as Obama and his Democratic cohorts passed a badly crafted ideologically based health care bill that more likely than not will be declared unconstitutional; Ohio Senate Bill 5 may face the same fate! In particular, the portions of the law that says teacher salaries are to be based on “merit” are vague to the point where it may violate the Equal Protection provisions of the United States Constitution. With no specificity as to what constitutes merit, what lies ahead is a plethora of sex and age discrimination suits as some school boards define “merit” as who is sleeping with the Principal; who is flirting; who is attractive vs. unattractive; maybe they want a “younger” staff….you get the picture. This bill is a lawyers dream, and school systems better get their checkbooks ready to pay some hefty legal fees.

As a Republican who is not a fan of any unions both by ideology and personal experience, this bill is a humdinger. Kasich should feel free to gamble with his own political fate, but to me there is no more important political goal than to rid the nation of Barack Obama and his leftist cabal. Those are the stakes in 2012.