Ohio Gov. John Kasich on Tuesday rejected Sen. Ted Cruz’s (R-TX) call for police to patrol Muslim neighborhoods in the wake of the attacks in Brussels, arguing that “the last thing we need is more polarization,” according to the New York Times.
Kasich told reporters at a press conference that “we don’t want to create divisions where we say, ‘O.K., well your religion, you’re a Muslim, so therefore we’re going to keep an eye on you,'” according to the New York Times.
“We are not at war with Islam; we’re at war with radical Islam,” Kasich said, according to the Times.
Kasich said that the United States cannot alienate Muslims.
“Frankly, for those who want to preserve Islam as a religion that is not at war with the West, we alienate them, how are we supposed to ever get the information we need?” he asked at the press conference, according to the Times.
Earlier on Tuesday, Cruz released a statement calling for “law enforcement to patrol and secure Muslim neighborhoods before they become radicalized.”
“Frankly, for those who want to preserve Islam as a religion that is not at war with the West, we alienate them, how are we supposed to ever get the information we need?” he asked at the press conference, according to the Times.
Of the three remaining GOP candidates, Kasich is, of course, by far the most sane and reasonable on this topic. But even he doesn’t get it. Muslims are part of the “we” to which he refers. They are hard-working, law-abiding U.S. citizens, many of whom have served to protect this country. And they every bit as much a right to practice their religion in peace as members of any other faith.
I disagree with Kasich’s statement in that I don’t think we’re “at war” with either Islam OR radical Islam.
We’re in a battle with terrorists who want to incite terror and destabilization. And no, I don’t think it’s an issue of semantics.
Unless I’M president, of course. Then we’re spying on EVERYBODY.
“how are we supposed to ever get the information we need?”
That’s an interesting spin on freedom of religion. It’s okay to be a Muslim so long as you provide us with the information we need.
The one thing I’ve actually been surprised about in this GOP mess of a primary is how not-ready-for-primetime the two big GOP governors of the two big electoral states have been.
It’s easy to make fun of Pres. W’s malapropisms, but through his eight years in office the one thing we heard over and over was how Jeb was ‘the smart one’ and ‘just you wait until he runs for President someday, because he’s going to beat the pants off the Democrats.’
Certainly we all kind of suspected that, behind the scenes, Governor Jeb! was being groomed for the part. We all knew about the workings of the GOP and the Bush cabal and the powerful political ties and money his family has, and there was definitely the impression given that it would one day be Jeb’s turn to run as part of the Dynasty and things were being done to make that happen.
And then Jeb! did run, and he didn’t seem to know how to string together a sentence, either, and he didn’t seem to know even how to handle his own talking points. At times, I got the impression that he didn’t even have any set talking points, let alone any competent campaign handlers telling him how to use them. Most of the brief time he was in the race, the public Jeb! simply looked like a deer in headlights. He should have had the most powerful, most well-funded, most politically-connected campaign in the race, but instead he had one of the most painfully incompetent. There goes the Dynasty, apparently.
Which leads to the other electorally big Governor in this race, Mr. Kasich. He’s a terrible public speaker, and his campaign has apparently done nothing at all to try and get him to curtail that awful Ohio dumb-guy accent he’s burdened with. And the times I’ve seen him on Colbert and some other places, well, it seems like he can’t seem to string together too much of a sentence, either. When he begins every other sentence with, “Let me tell you,” or “Here’s what I’m saying,” or something like that, you’re looking at a guy filling time instead of using his extensive public experience and campaign training to even come close to telling us something he actually believes. And these pitiful attempts at being ‘nice’ or at being the anti-Trump just come off as either totally incompetent or sadly naive. He doesn’t even seem to be aware that the base of his party wants Trump and all the Trump-like behavior that comes with it, not his dopey nice-guy act.
I always thought that these campaigns just brutally and relentlessly trained their candidates for speaking to the public, but either the Jeb! and Kasich campaigns haven’t done that, or they’ve failed miserably. You might argue that it’s the candidates themselves that are at fault (Chris Christie doesn’t seem to have problems speaking in public), and sure, that’s part of my point. But if you can train someone like W to run for President and even come close to winning, then certainly Jeb! and John must be trainable, too.
And the fact that not one of these people has been able to effectively counter Trump, despite having Karl Rove and the entire GOP infrastructure on their side, points to some deep, deep flaws within the GOP. Flaws that are reflected in these milquetoast, not-even-remotely-ready-for-the-national-spotlight candidates (men who are Governors, after all) they’ve offered up this season - offered up not as viable candidates, but as sacrificial lambs.