NEW YORK, April 12 (UPI) — Republican presidential candidate John Kasich is warning voters that this presidential election offers voters two paths — one that “could drive American down into a ditch, not make us great again.”
The Ohio governor, in prepared remarks Tuesday to the Women’s National Republican Club in Midtown Manhattan, criticizing the political strategy employed by Donald Trump as one “based on exploiting Americans instead of lifting them up” and will “inevitably lead to divisions, paranoia, isolation and promises that can never, ever be fulfilled.”
Kasich calls the “path to darkness” the “antithesis of all that America has meant for 240 years.”
His speech never mentions Trump by name.
Kasich lags far behind the businessman in delegate counts with 143 compared with 740 for Trump and Ted Cruz at 540, according to CBS News’ current delegate count. A total of 1,237 delegates are needed to secure the nomination.
He says his path to the nomination is “steep” but “well-trod” and “solid.”
Kasich, in his prepared speech, mocks Trump’s proposals, including an isolationist foreign policy and a “religious test for immigration.”
On trimming the budget, he says, “We have been offered hallow promises to impose a value-added tax, balance budgets through simple and whimsical cuts in ‘fraud, waste and abuse.’ ”
On CBS This Morning on Tuesday, Kasich said there is “zero chance” he would agree to be Trump’s running mate if he wins the Republican nomination.
“Look, I am running for president of the U.S. and that’s it. If I’m not president — which I think I have an excellent shot to be — I will finish my term as governor and maybe I will be a co-host on your show. You never know.”
In an interview for a USA Today column published Monday, Trump named Kasich as one of several people he likes when asked whether Marco Rubio would be a potential vice presidential pick.
On Monday during a CNN town hall, he called the Republican primary delegate process “bizarre.” He said the Republican National Convention should open the process to more candidates.
Kasich appeared at the town hall with his wife and twin 16-year-old daughters.
Also during the town hall, he spoke about LGBT rights. He asked “what the hell” was happening in Mississippi, where the governor signed a last week that would allow business to deny service to people who are gay or transgender.
In Ohio, businesses are legally permitted to refuse service to gay or transgender people.
At another town hall earlier Monday, he dodged a question about “conversion therapy,” a technique that tries to change a person’s gender identity or sexual orientation that has been banned in several states. Instead, he explained his position on gay marriage — he does not agree with it but says the U.S. Supreme Court has guaranteed it as a right.
He told CBS he would not have signed North Carolina’s so-called “bathroom law” that bars local municipalities from prohibiting discrimination based based on gender identity or sexual orientation and directs public facilities to designate bathrooms for use by people based on their “biological sex.”
