Kasichmentum!

John Kasich has decided to campaign in the tradition of Jon Hunstman and Joe Lieberman — that is, to campaign on the premise that most members of his own party are terrible. As a strategy for winning the nomination, the merits of this approach are…not obvious. In Kasich’s case, accepting the Medicaid expansion and hence acceding to the greatest threat to human liberty that has ever existed left him with few other options. But we shouldn’t confuse him with an actual moderate:

I think Kasich is right about the moral necessity of the Medicaid expansion, and I also agree with his implicit point that for most Christian conservatives the political application of their faith has a tendency to begin and end in people’s bedrooms. I, however, am not a Republican primary voter or donor. People who are Republican primary voters and/or prospective donors are unlikely to respond well to someone calling a central tenet of party doctrine immoral.

Kasich’s decision to run as the Last Sane Republican, as well as his laudatory decision to support the Medicaid expansion, might create the impression that he is a representative of that nearly extinct breed, the genuinely moderate Republican. But this would be highly misleading.

For example, in his opening volley against his opponents, Kasich railed against “tax schemes that don’t add up, that put our kids in a deeper hole than they are today.” But is Kasich’s tax plan any different? Not really. It might be more realistic than, say, Ben Carson’s plan to fund the entire federal government with a 10 percent or 15 percent flat tax, but that’s like saying that Las Vegas is cooler than Phoenix in July.

Kasich’s tax plan is standard-issue contemporary Republicanism, a combination of massive upward income distribution and magical thinking. As with his opponents, the centerpiece of his plan are massively regressive tax cuts: slashing the top marginal rate from 39.6 percent to 28 percent, cutting capital gains taxes, and eliminating the estate tax (which kicks in at amounts of $5.43 million per person.) This plan would blow a massive hole in the budget that would require either huge deficits or cuts in spending for the poor that Kasich has correctly described as immoral. Nothing about this is new: He has been equally obsessed with cutting the tax burden of the upper class as both a legislator and governor.

And not only is Kasich dishonestly suggesting that his tax plan could be consistent with balancing the budget, at Wednesday’s debate he reiterated his support for a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. This is an outright crackpot idea that would force the federal government to cut spending and/or raise taxes during recessions, a disaster that would cause untold misery every time the economy went through a downturn.

In other words, his acceptance of the Medicaid expansion notwithstanding, Kasich is essentially on the same page as his allegedly nutty opponents. The fact that he’s perceived as too left-wing to win the Republican nomination says more about the competition than it does about him.

Speaking of which, Jim Webb is making noises about running as an independent. The party left him! If he does, hopefully it will be with the same energy that he brought to his primary campaign. If he makes an actual effort to throw Virginia to the Republicans, on the other hand…