By Mark Rhoads -
Thanks to early voting ballots, Gov. John Kasich ran fourth in a three-person race in the Arizona primary when Sen. Marco Rubio led him by 25,000 votes according to ABC News, even though Rubio dropped out of the GOP race on March 15 after he lost Florida.
Yet even now Rubio has more delegates than Gov. Kasich who won his home state.
Ohio is the only state Kasich has won this year. So far, Donald Trump has won 20 state contests and now has 738 delegates of 1,237 he needs to win a majority on the first ballot in Cleveland.
Trump has lost 12 states to rival candidates. Sen. Ted Cruz has won eight states and now has 483 delegates. John Kasich has won just his home state and has only 143 delegates with no mathematical path at all to a majority of delegates. Even Rubio, who dropped out, has 166 delegates–23 more than Kasich. So why is Kasich still in the race? My most charitable guess is that his delusional vanity is at stake and the most cynical guess is that he knows he is playing to the role of spoiler and just does not care.
Kasich was the spoiler who cost a victory for Rubio in Virginia and he cost a victory for Cruz in Missouri and has siphoned off votes from Cruz in other states.
Kasich is on the record with CNN as saying he deserves to be "rewarded" for his service to the GOP in Congress and as governor of Ohio. That is an odd way of looking at reasons that people should vote for him. It is about him and his life and not about you and your hopes for the future of the country.
Kasich would not be a bad president if he were polling above one percent in national polls but the truth is that Kasich is a vain older man with a prickly temper who might in his dreams, like Chris Christie, still hope that Trump will ask him to be his running mate. That is sad for someone who started out the year as a worthy if not wildly popular candidate.
From this point on, Kasich can only further embarrass himself and hurt the GOP but does he care? No.
