Better in their words…

Kimberley A. Strassel
WSJ Aug. 20, 2015 7:29 p.m.

There’s compassion, and there’s compassion, and then there’s John Kasich. The Ohio governor has long odds at becoming the Republican nominee, at least for now. But he’s forcing conservatives to confront a very old—if shined up—choice about the role of government.

As the nation goes about mentally categorizing the crowded Republican field, here’s one way to divide the arena: small-government reformers and big-government surrenderists. That debate is at the center of a bigger GOP meditation on how to better appeal to the poor and minorities. Mr. Kasich has emerged as the most eloquent and compelling spokesperson for the go-big camp.

The political veteran wouldn’t put it that way, of course. Mr. Kasich’s presidential candidacy so far has been a study in shrewd politics. The governor perfectly timed his late announcement, riding the headlines into a slot at the prime-time Ohio debate. That allowed him to play to a home-state crowd, which happily overlooked his flaws. About 24 million national viewers saw an arena standing and clapping for him. He’s since surged in New Hampshire, nabbed a few endorsements and become a media favorite.

And he took to the soapbox in Iowa this week to keep driving his theme: that it’s OK to be “conservative” and have a “big heart.” It’s his way of excusing his decision to embrace ObamaCare’s expansion of Medicaid, putting that welfare program on track to consume 50% of Ohio’s operating budget in 2016. “Everybody has a right to their God-given purpose,” said Mr. Kasich at the debate, bragging that his Medicaid blowout is helping the “working poor” to “get on their feet.”

Mr. Kasich’s is fresh to many voters, but his message isn’t. This is “compassionate conservatism”—or at least a bastardized version of it. George W. Bush first used that phrase to explain how conservative policies made everyone better off. But it would later turn into a license for Republicans to embrace government for their own conservative ends. Giant new education spending was needed to create school “accountability”; a new Medicare drug entitlement would create health-care “competition;” green-energy subsidies bolstered “national security.” Accountability, competition, national security—all conservative priorities, and all (according to the compassionate) best achieved through bigger government.

The philosophy got a revamp in the past year in the self-styled “reformicon” movement. This collection of conservative journalists and thinkers argue that their embrace of tax credits and subsidies is about modernizing conservative policy. In reality, it’s Compassionate Conservatism 2.0. It’s a savvier version, one that places more emphasis on selling policies to a skeptical base, even as it markets them to new audiences. Thus Mr. Kasich’s refrain that his state’s Medicaid program is growing at “one of the lowest rates in the country” even as it helps “the poor.”

The GOP came out of the 2012 presidential loss with a new appreciation of its growing disconnect with the problems of the poor and struggling in the Obama economy. The Compassionate Conservative 2.0 movement is one answer, and Mr. Kasich is not alone in embracing it. Sen. Rick Santorum is fired up about using government power to help “blue-collar workers.” Gov. Mike Huckabee passionately defends Social Security as it is. Sen. Marco Rubio has woven middle-class tax breaks and low-income handouts into his tax proposal. If Donald Trump knew who the reformicons were, he’d probably say they were terrific.

Mr. Kasich is a happy-in-life-and-God conservative, and it makes him seem the optimist. Which is bizarre, because underpinning the entire compassionate-conservative movement is a glum surrender to the entitlement state. The left has won; all that remains is to argue that conservative big-government is better managed than liberal big-government. Note Mr. Kasich’s celebration that his poverty program is less bad than other poverty programs. Yay. It’s not really a winning message.

Of course, there is another approach to compassion. It’s the version made popular by Jack Kemp, and embraced by House Ways and Means Chairman Paul Ryan—and a growing list of converts. It holds that there is nothing whatsoever compassionate about consigning low-income Americans to a government health-care system that delivers second-class outcomes. There’s nothing compassionate about making today’s working poor pay into a bleeding Social Security system or finance middle-class tax perks. There’s nothing compassionate about propping up a federally run poverty industrial-complex that spends most of its money on itself.

The Kemp-Ryan view knows that government is the problem, not the answer—not in any form. The answer is to devolve the money and power back to states and communities, where it can do the most good for the people who most need it. As a governor, Mr. Kasich ought to understand this argument better than most—especially given any number of smart state-level reforms he’s done to help underserved communities in Ohio.

Mr. Kasich has a mostly impressive conservative record. He has political skills. He has energy and optimism. Imagine if he were to apply all that to a Kemp-Ryan approach, to spreading the gospel of smaller government, in the name of helping those most vulnerable. He’d be a force to reckon with.

But that would involve repenting of his Medicaid mistake. Mr. Kasich might remember that it’s never too late to ask for forgiveness.

Write to kim@wsj.com.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-compassion-of-john-kasich-1440113389y