John Kasich’s “Screw You” To Appalachia

John Kasich has hit a very rough spot in the campaign. Be it the unethical influence his campaign had with some pension fund managers or the repeated illogical remarks coming out of the campaign, the hits just keep coming. And this afternoon, the Strickland campaign opted to seize on one of the remarks and make an issue of it.

Here’s a response to Yvette McGee Brown’s speech on urban issues from Kasich spokesman Rob Nichols:

“Not until Ted Strickland feared needing their votes did he give urban Ohioans a second thought. Having grown up in a chicken shack on Duck Run, he has all but ignored our cities’ economies and their workers. It’s a disgraceful record whose pain for urban Ohioans can’t be swept under the rug with a bunch of pretty speeches.”

First off, Nichols should probably be fired for the shear stupidity behind this remark. He just cast John Kasich in the very image he’s firmly tried to shake: a big city, silver spoon, elitist.

And the bigger issue that I doubt many will fail to fully grasp, is just how much of a “screw you” statement this is to the Appalachian Ohio region and rural Ohio in general.

You see, Ted Strickland unfortunately isn’t the only person

By so casually dismissing the hardships that Ted had to deal with, the Kasich campaign just issued a very personal backhanded insult to a great many rural Ohioans with similar stories in their past.

I can’t even express the full impact of this in words. I know many people who underwent some sort of tragedy like Strickland, and the way they dealt with those tragedies played a huge role in making them who they are. The Kasich campaign just tried to belittle every single one of them, and the casual way in which they did it just adds further insult.

And John Kasich can’t play political damage control and issue any sort of meaningful apology to the ones who’ll be offended by this.