The MSM Sends the Message for Kasich

Yesterday's front page of the Columbus Dispatch communicated the exact image the Kasich campaign wants to portray this campaign season.

For everyone that read the article, they came away learning one primary point...

John Kasich is an experienced and principled pragmatic problem solver.

As we all know, if your message isn't communicated quickly and efficiently in an article, you're going to lose your audience. Well, the Dispatch provided the message perfectly in the first three paragraphs:

Despite a projected $7 billion hole in Ohio's next two-year budget, Republican John Kasich assured those attending a campaign rally last month that he is up to the task of balancing it if elected governor in November.

After all, Kasich said, he had on-the-job experience in Congress as an architect of the landmark federal balanced-budget agreement of 1997.

"Not only did we balance the budget," Kasich said, "but we paid down a half-trillion dollars on the national debt -- never been done before -- and we were running a $250 billion surplus, and we had a 10-year projected surplus of $5 trillion."

Gotta love getting your key talking point front and center, eh?

Is the article all positive? Of course not. The Dispatch does a fair job of providing both viewpoints of Kasich's success in Congress as a steward of the federal budget surplus.

But one paragraph does a great job of extinguishing the argument that Kasich doesn't play well with others:

"John Kasich was a pragmatist," said Domenici, now a senior fellow at the Washington-based Bipartisan Policy Center. During negotiations, he said, Kasich and others "had to accept compromises to get things done. He (Kasich) did that, and he surprised a lot of people."

Now, some on the opposite side of the aisle may love reading this quote from Newt Gingrich:

"I always preferred having Kasich near me," Gingrich said, adding that Kasich "pulled the Republican conference an enormous distance in the right direction by courage and tenacity. Without him, we couldn't have gotten it done."

More likely than not, those happy with latching Kasich to Gingrich are the same people who believe aligning Kasich and Rob Portman with Bush will work, too. Well, as history has proven, attempting to push a link to someone unpopular who used to be in power is a tactic very rarely proven effective in campaigns. But, by all means Dems, keep it up.

As I mentioned in previous poll analyses, with Kasich's less than strong name ID, it's important for the candidate to define himself before the opposition does. Well, without spending a cent, the Kasich campaign got themselves a front page story detailing the exact definition they were looking for.

Thanks, CD.