Kasich is not the first to make such an argument. A few years ago, Brookings Institution scholar, Tom Mann and AEI's Norm Ornstein started a series of works culminating in It's Even Worse Than It Looks, summarized by the following line:
"The Republican Party has become an insurgent outlier-- ideologically extreme; contemptuous of the inherited social and economic policy regime; scornful of compromise; unpersuaded by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition."
Prior to that book, Mann and Ornstein were considered basically centrist, nonpartisan observers, but after that book came out, they were labeled leftist apparatchiks. Why? You can't call one party a bunch of kooks without being called a shill for the other party (a topic about which I have written, but that's another matter). Kasich is basically coming around to the Mann & Ornstein thesis.
In order to examine the state of things, though, let's talk about this through the political science lens and ask a question that should otherwise have an obvious answer. 'Cuz, what the fuck would we do with our time if we didn't obfuscate obvious questions? What is a party?
Valdimir Orlando Key. He didn't like his name. Would you? Would you have people call you, "Valdy." In writing, he went by V.O. Isn't that cooler? I kinda like that. Catchy. That must be why everybody in political science still reads his stuff, or at least knows who he is. Anywho, he described a party as being a tripartite thingamajig: PIG-PIE-PAO. That's how we all memorized it for exams. Parties in government, parties in the electorate, and parties as organizations. Aaaaaand, there's our template to talk about this Kasich/broken party stuff. So, let's go with that, even though it is probably more complicated now, and I'll get to that.
Parties in government. The Republican Party can't govern. That's Kasich's central frustration. Whatever else he says, that's why he's really pissed. He is a social conservative, and a tax cutter. Yes, he hates Trump, but at the end of the day, give him a tax cut, rollbacks of the welfare state, some abortion restrictions, and basic functionality and he'll be a happy camper. That last part is important, though. Kasich actually cares about basic functionality, and he's getting none of this. If Kennedy retires from the Supreme Court, he'll get abortion restrictions (and he might anyway if Ginsburg dies, because she's a total fucking idiot who would have stepped down before the GOP took the Senate if she had a brain in her head), but other than that, so far, Kasich's gettin' bupkis.
Why? Because the GOP can't govern. This is a peculiarly ineffectual period of unified government. Years ago, David Mayhew did a study of legislative productivity during unified and divided government, and found that unified government was, on average, no more productive than divided government. Why? Short answer: high degree of variability in each, and lots of other factors. Other scholars since have made arguments like the following: A period of unified government will be more productive when the party with unified control is actually... unified, and divided government only produces gridlock with polarization. Thus, we had divided government with high productivity during Nixon's administration because Nixon wasn't an inflexible ideologue, but Obama vs. the Tea Party led to gridlock because... see Mann & Ornstein.
What's going on now? We have unified government with low productivity. That has happened before. Under Carter, for example. And I've been comparing Trump to Carter since the primary campaign! But, this isn't just about Trump. Congress can't get its act together to pass anything because within Congress, the GOP is dysfunctional. (And under Carter, the Democratic Party still had a range of positions from Northern liberals to Southern conservatives, although that was also true during the higher-productivity periods with Johnson and Nixon). The process of dealing with "repeal-and-replace" was, to use Chris Murphy's phrase again, "nuclear-grade bonkers." After seven years of promising to "repeal-and-replace" Obamacare, that was the best they could do, and it had nothing to do with Trump. That is a legislative caucus in a state of total dysfunction.
Congressional Republicans similarly ran around like chickens with their heads cut off (I guess I'm on a barnyard theme here) trying to figure out how to not breach the debt ceiling until Trump cut a deal with Pelosi and Schumer. These people have no clue what they are doing.
True tax reform won't happen. As a side-note, you may have noticed that Bob Corker supposedly won't vote for a tax "reform" bill that increases the deficit. I'll... remind everyone of the letter signed by Portman and Capito about their objections to the Medicaid cuts McConnell was pushing in the "repeal-and-replace" plans. They caved. A Republican who opposes tax cuts? I haven't seen that in decades. Yes, decades. If Corker really is serious... I'll believe it when I see it. They can probably get a tax cut through because... this is the Republican Party. It is what Reagan would have wanted, peace and blessings be upon him, or something like that. So far, though, these people can't govern. At all.
What is wrong with that fucking pig? Is it not getting enough pie? Too much? Maybe some kung pao chicken? George likes his chicken spicy... More to come.