Thursday, February 25, 2016

Kasich advice on a diverted money stream

A wary glance  at the TV screen  yesterday reminded me once again that the only folks having any fun with the cyclonic disarray of the Republican candidates are Donald Trump and the cable news hosts. We no longer live in the era of talking heads.   They have morphed into maniacal heads with MSNBC's Chris Matthews leading the sky-is-falling pack.

When you have so many hours to fill in front of the camera, repetitious  broken breaking news serves the commercial interruptions very well to relieve the viewers of all of the deadly  things that can happen to you  if you choose a new drug without first talking to your doctor. (Some otherwise healthy people are known to become ill from simply hearing of the potential threats.)

But it  all adds up to a  sort of received wisdom that you can't buy in a bottle across the counter. For example,  we happened to see John Kasich shrugging off a reporter's question  about how he would deal with the other candidates.  No way,  he said, would he get involved in their campaigns.  He had his own campaign to run!

But as he was getting some free TV time, his campaign strategist  John Weaver  was releasing  a memo describing Marco Rubio's fund-raising as  wildly beyond the tether.

According to The Hill, the memo said:  "Contrary to what his campaign is trying to portray,  Senator Rubio just endures another disappointing performance [in Nevada].
 Republicans are now left to wonder whether investing in Marco Rubio is throwing good money after bad."

Clearly Kasich was out to discourage contributors from joining wallets in behalf of the Floridian. The Ohio governor  didn't want to be  the bottom-feeder in the race.  How could he be running his own campaign if his money - good or bad -   was diverted to Rubio?  How, indeed?

As we used to ask impatiently when my dad was driving the family south, "Are we in Florida yet?"  



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