Hey, remember John Kasich?
There has been so much brutal back-and-forth between Donald Trump and Ted Cruz leading up to next week’s New York primary that it’s almost too easy to forget that there is a third Republican still in the race.
That desire to remind voters that he exists probably explains why the Ohio governor stopped by Late Night with Seth Meyers Thursday night to show off his goofy side. But after getting the details of his food tour through New York City out of the way, they moved on to more substantive issues.
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Meyers noted that when Kasich was last on his show, he was running in 11th or 12th place in the national polls. “It was Kasich tied with no opinion,” he said. “And now you are in third.”
“It’s like this, there’s Coke, there’s Pepsi, and there’s Kasich,” the candidate said. “Because nobody’s heard of me, right? So now it’s sort of Coke, Pepsi, and Kasich, I think. And then people just have to make up their mind if they want to put me in their cart.” Right...
While Meyers commended Kasich for “refusing to take the low road to the highest office in the land,” as he’s fond of saying, he also wanted him to explain why Republican voters have rejected that approach so loudly. Kasich touted his hypothetical general election match-up numbers with Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, but of course that will not help him get the GOP nomination.
As for this summer’s Republican National Convention in Kasich’s home state of Ohio, Meyers asked, “Isn’t this going to be like a UFC fight if you go to a convention? Because you currently have fewer delegates than Rubio.” After getting Kasich to reluctantly admit that he will not have the most delegates heading into the convention, Meyers asked, “Isn’t that invalidating the votes of the people who’ve shown up at all these primaries beforehand?”
Rather than answering that question directly, Kasich simply said he had faith in the delegates to finally recognize him as the sane choice over Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, regardless of what the voters may think.
“You have to be careful,” Meyers warned, “because I think that convention is gonna be a crazy place to be,” especially if he tries to take the nomination away from someone who received more votes. But unsurprisingly, Kasich didn’t want to hear it.
