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Render Unto Kasich: Ohio Gov. Offers Bibles to Critics of Obamacare Expansion
John Kasich claims to be a Republican. In fact, he launched his quixotic run for the presidency on the Republican ticket. Yet he continues to approach governance using the arguments of a random “Democratic Strategist” guest on MSNBC Weekend.
Speaking Tuesday morning at the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, Governor Kasich swatted away complaints about his controversial Medicaid expansion in Ohio with one of his now-expected sermonettes:
“Look at Medicaid expansion — do you know how many people are yelling at me? I go to events where people yell at me. You know what I tell em? I mean, God bless ’em, I’m telling them a little bit better than this: There’s a book, it’s got a new part and an old part. They put it together. It’s a remarkable book. If you don’t have one, I’ll buy you one, and it talks about how we treat the poor.”
Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and, you know what… also give Caesar the things which are God’s.
While I appreciate the Governor’s offer of a free Bible, the copies I own say that I should help the needy. Nowhere does it claim I should subcontract my compassion to bureaucrats in some far-off imperial capital. Jesus didn’t demand social justice from the centurions, lobby Pontius Pilate to raise the minimum wage, or chain himself to a chariot shouting “Jewish Lives Matter.”
I’m a humble layman, but as best as I can figure, God wants me personally “to look after orphans and widows in their distress.” He asks my church corporately to “continue to remember the poor.” He asks Christians to “comfort those who are in any trouble.”
Frankly, it would be far easier if Jesus commanded his followers to vote for candidates who will complete this painstaking work for them. But He didn’t let us off that easy, Governor Kasich.
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I still remember Kasich, in the Senate, as McCain wanna-be and kiss-up. A plain old RINO. What has changed? Nothing.
I guess his consultants were so damn sure that all those mythical moderates would just rally to this approach, he could not go wrong.
Using peoples faith to shame them into being stupid rarely works. Holier than thou rarely works. Extreme sanctimony rarely works.
Except on the progressive side.
I guess he is planning on a whole lot of crossover vote in New Hampshire. Oh, wait, they have a real avowed socialist to vote for.
Sorry, John. Go home and peddle it to the people who elected you.
Maybe Kasich should try reading one himself.
Mr. Kasich does not seem to understand that it ain’t charity if the government takes it from you.
Maybe he could be Hillary Clinton’s running mate.
The Bible also says some pretty strong things about those in positions of authority conducting themselves with integrity… and one’s approach (responsible or not) to the public treasury would seem to be part of that. Other people’s money…
So if you’re blowing a hole in your state budget — and thus doing harm to everyone and injustice to your state taxpayers — on a quest to do something politically popular that doesn’t necessarily have much long-term benefit for most of the people you’re trying to help (that federal money being a temporary thing) — I’m not so sure you’re actually acting consistently with Scripture, Governor.
And I’m realist enough that if it were painfully obvious that Kasich had to accept the expansion or turn the governor’s mansion over to a Democrat I wouldn’t write him off over it. But it seems pretty clear that’s not what happened — seeing that his own legislature tried to block it, and that at least one governor in a bluer state rejected the expansion and pulled it off.
If we failed to pay our tithes each month, the church does not show up on our doorstep with guns drawn, demanding that we pay them or get thrown into jail.
Although what an evangelical SWAT team would like, I will leave to the reader’s imagination.
The same is not true with the IRS.
Mr Kasich needs to read 1 Samuel 8:10-18.
John Kasich is popular for what he is not. He is not Ted Strickland, the man he defeated in 2006, and he certainly was not the self-imploding candidate the Ohio Democratic Party ran against him four years later. He has convinced himself of his popularity without real empirical evidence.
My pastor was a Top Gun Marine aviator before he entered the pastorate. There is no need to maintain a SWAT team, or even discuss the church’s finances from the pulpit.
Well if he wasn’t a lock for the nomination before that kindly sermon ought to do the trick.
And nowhere does The Constitution claim We should subcontract Our compassion to bureaucrats.
Perhaps We should offer free copies to politicians.
I agree with ExJon entirely–both in terms of how the text of Scripture is interpreted, and in the practical realities of welfare.
Jesus nowhere says “petition Caesar to send legions to enact requirements for precisely how many carbohydrates and sugary drinks are permissible for the poor to consume with Roman gold.” He commands us to feed the poor.
When the Left (and, sadly, Gov. Kasich seems to be self-identifying with them on this) distort the words of Christ in this regard, every Christian must stand up and object.
When the Left uses “feeding the poor” as code words for “feed an ever-increasing, ever-bloated, ever-less-effective bureaucracy”, every citizen must stand up and object.
And every person of good will must ever, and always, object when fools confuse the building of a bureaucracy with actually feeding the poor.
(Been a church deacon–and literally taken homeless families off the street; am the father of a mentally-retarded sugar plum who is “cared for” by the Medicaid bureaucracy–and seen the lengths that bureaucracy will go to to ensure that Annie can not–under any circumstances–be treated by anybody other than a Medicaid provider.)
As much as I gripe about the moderates in the race I will still go tap an icon on the screen come election day. Unless it is this idiot Kasich. If the best we can do is nominate him we deserve four years of hell on earth under the thumb of Hillary Clinton.
That biblical line melts Christian’s brains (even on Ricochet) and it really peeves me off.
I thought “Thou shalt not steal” was a freaking commandment!
It isn’t stealing when we vote politicians back into office with 85% or better repetitive success so they can confiscate our personal property, borrow from our posterity, and spend it in our best interest.
That one is on we the people.
I disagree, no matter who tells you to do it, taking someone’s money is stealing. “My boss told me to do it” is never an excuse.
The people stealing your money were elected to office by you.
Not only is this a terrible capitulation to the moral language of the left, but it shows that he has no grasp of how to argue against government expansion when his back is against the wall. What is his case against Obamacare? Or Dodd-Frank? I can imagine that once in office he will say they that they need tinkering around the edges but we shouldn’t quarrel with the noble goals of their proponents. Pathetic.
How is this guy in the race and Perry is out?
Does “Elected” mean “stealing is no longer immoral?”
Never understood the animus against John Kasich. Now I do. Learn something every day. I will not vote for John Kasich for anything. Thanks for the Post. Thanks also to the NRO Corner reporting of this also.
This. 1000 times, this. The worst part of the incompetent, bureaucratic,mess that are the government’s social welfare programs, their biggest flaw, by far is that they rob individuals of the ability to do the individual acts of charity that are as good for the soul of the helper as that of the helped.
It isn’t stealing when you ask them to take it from you and distribute it for your own well being.
Gov. Perry is out because he abandon the principals of federalism he could’ve championed.
Virtually no politician in this country is elected with 100% of the vote. They are all handling money from people who didn’t vote for them.
This was my quibble with John Roberts on Obamacare, by the way, when he basically said it’s not the Court’s job to save us from ourselves. When actually, within its constitutional role, it is the role of the courts to protect a vulnerable minority from an out-of-control majority. If he wants to throw the whole concept of judicial review out the window that’s one thing. Otherwise…
Actually, you don’t. Kasich served in the House not the Senate.
I’m pretty sure most people didn’t give anyone such permission, nor was there anyway to abstain without the oversized burden of leaving the country (and moving to somewhere else that would also steal from you.) If your neighbors get together and say they voted for you to give them your money (they even allowed you to have a vote), or you can move out of your home, would it be moral for them to do so?
It is still acquiescence.
We agree to it every day.
There is no moral case for taxation outside that originally enumerated in the Constitution, but you, me, and the majority on this site vote republican and they are glad to collect we authorize them to take.