Ohio Gov. John Kasich, a Republican presidential contender, isn’t towing the conservative line on Planned Parenthood funding and the Syrian refugee crisis.
In an interview with Fox News Sunday, Gov. Kasich warned conservatives against shutting down the government in an effort to defund Planned Parenthood.
While Mr. Kasich agrees the organization “ought to be defunded,” the fight is a loosing battle because President Obama would never sign such a bill into law, Mr. Kasich explained to moderator Chris Wallace.
“When you shut the government down, people don’t like it,” Mr. Kasich said on the Sunday news program. “And you shouldn’t shut it down unless you have a great chance of success.”
That position puts Mr. Kasich at odds with another presidential contenders, most notably front-runner Donald Trump and Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, and most conservatives in the House of Representatives and the Senate. The lawmakers have vowed to defund the organization after a series of undercover videos showed Planned Parenthood employees’ handling — and potentially selling — of unborn fetuses of aborted babies.
But that’s not it.
On the same Sunday show, Mr. Kasich also said he backed Mr. Obama’s stance on bringing at least 10,000 Syrian refugees into the United States over the next 12 months.
“I support that,” Mr. Kasich said. “It’s very important that we don’t let anybody infiltrate who’s part of a radical group. But America needs to be part of this solution.”
Although many GOP presidential hopefuls have said the U.S. needs to do its part to help out the European humanitarian crisis, none, other than Mr. Kasich, have offered such an outright endorsement of the president’s plan.
• Kelly Riddell can be reached at kriddell@washingtontimes.com.
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