Ticket Replay: Ohio Republican John Kasich caught telling a true story in governor's race

During the holiday season, as in years past, The Ticket is republishing some of our favorite items from the previous political year. This story was originally published on Sept. 17, 2010 (Kasich won, btw):

You know how politicians often tell stories about the precocious thing their young daughter said about the economy when no other witnesses were around? Or the unfortunate woman they happened to meet who needs precisely the kind of program the pol is selling to his audience that very night?

And if you're like most Americans, you take that convenient yarn with maybe three ounces of salt, despite Michelle Obama's healthy food warnings about too much of that substance.

Well, here's a delightful news gem called to our attention by a loyal Ticket reader, Ohio's Jon Keeling, one of the nation's top local politics bloggers over at Third Base Politics.

It concerns this week's Ohio gubernatorial debate between former Republican Rep. John Kasich and the Democrat incumbent, Ted Strickland. As is the case in many races all across the country for the Nov. 2 elections, polls show the Democrat is currently trailing the Republican.

But that's not the fun story. The fun story is that during the Tuesday debate Kasich began to wax on about, you know, an older couple he'd recently talked with in a Bob Evans restaurant and how they had a pad out and were going over their challenged budget because of the bad economy that hasn't been stimulated by you-know-whose hundreds of billions of you-know-what.

Now, that story is obviously as phony as an assertion that some healthcare legislation will cover more people for less money. So a Democratic blogger in Ohio called Kasich on it. He wrote: "Someone please send me a photo of the Ohio couple in the Bob Evans with the napkin and I'll personally apologize to Congressman Kasich the next time I'm at his country club."

Well, order up some humble pie while you're there, Anthony, because CNN's John King did better than that. He produced a film clip of Honest John Kasich talking to that very couple. (See video below.) And, look! There's the pad on the table.

Would you like ice cream on that piece of pie?

And thanks again, Jon!

--Andrew Malcolm

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It took a guy to do this? House Speaker-elect John Boehner orders a change to benefit just 71 members

For some reason it took a male Speaker of the House to accomplish this:

The nearly six dozen female members of the incoming House of Representatives will have a new restroom just as close to the chamber's floor as their male colleagues. A sometimes significant comfort, given legislators' propensity to blather.

Ohio's Rep. John Boehner, who retakes the Speaker's gavel from Nancy Pelosi come the new Congress in January, is ordering up a myriad of changes symbolic and meaningful in the chamber to underline the transition to the leadership of a Republican majority this time.

His transition team under Rep. Greg Walden is still drawing up lists.

Out, for instance, go the frivolous House resolutions on somebody's birthday or some team's victory. And now we learn, in comes a brand-new restroom for the 71 female members of the House. And it'll be bipartisan too.

Until now female members have had to traipse much farther than male colleagues to find restroom facilities, even during these past four years of leadership under the country's first female speaker.

This is good news for everyone except one person. The House Parliamentarian's office adjacent to the legislative floor will disappear to make way for the new bathroom stalls.

-- Andrew Malcolm

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Photo: JustBathroomSigns.com

An historic change election but look who's still in charge: McConnell, Pelosi, Hoyer, Boehner, Reid

House Democrats assemble today to pick caucus leaders for the new Congress.

Lots of fresh new faces, right, after an historically disastrous showing like Nov. 2?

Not.

Outgoing Speaker Nancy Pelosi has decided she'll stay on come January as leader of the minority. Maryland's Steny Hoyer will have the No. 2 job and Pelosi has crafted an ill-defined compromise to make South Carolina's James Clyburn, the highest-ranking African American in Congress, something called assistant leader. Anything to keep the same old trio atop the smaller pile.

Leadership affairs on the Republican side of Capitol Hill are already settled with Ohio's ex-Speaker John Boehner to become the new speaker, Virginia's Eric Cantor as his No. 2 and Kentucky's Mitch McConnell still GOP minority leader in the Senate with Arizona's Jon Kyl as his No. 2. Harry Reid will still lead the diminished Democratic majority.

(UPDATE: 12:22 p.m. GOP House members unanimously elect John Boehner the new Speaker. Dems vote 150-46 to keep Nancy Pelosi as minority caucus leader.

The chairman of the Democratic National Committee is the same, President's Obama's favorite bilingual, Harvard-educated ex-governor, Tim Kaine.

But new uncertainty erupted Tuesday over on the Republican National Committee, which was supposed to be the winning organization. When the GOP controls....

House Speaker-elect John Boehner is up for talking but, for now, not talking compromise (video)

As we promised right here earlier Thursday afternoon, The Ticket will be publishing a few more transcripts than usual for a while.

As the new political balance from Tuesday's mid-term elections sorts itself out in Washington, we imagine readers like us want to see for themselves how the about-to-be-diminished Democrats and about-to-be-reinforced Republicans position themselves, both for the upcoming new Congress in January and for the 2012 election, now just 735 days away. But who's counting?

Here we are posting, courtesy of the Fox News Channel, its full interview Thursday afternoon of House Speaker-to-be John Boehner by Special Report anchor Bret Baier. The full transcript appears below.

As you will see, we are clearly still in the public-strutting stage of this historic political realignment in the Capitol, with the Ohio leader of the House GOP majority showing that he heard that anti-establishment-campaign warning from voters and constituents alike.

Compromise is not what the conservative soldiers want to hear from D.C. so soon. There's still ...

New faces of the Class of 2010: Rubio, Coons, Noem, Hoeven, Johnson, Corbett, Haley, Martinez, Fallin

This week's midterm elections pushed numerous new faces onto the national political scene.

So we've constructed a photo gallery here of these new folks as a sort of introduction to political people you're likely to be hearing more about in coming months and years. (Click each picture to enlarge.)

One is Marco Rubio, Florida's new Republican senator whose victory speech we have in video format above here. As the son of Cuban exiles, watch for....

Today's vote was repudiation of a Washington that refuses to listen to Americans: John Boehner - video

Text of remarks by Rep. John Boehner, House Speaker-designate, as provided by his office 

Thank you.

Thank you Pete Sessions, for your tireless leadership.

And thank you to all our candidates, supporters and volunteers who have worked so hard to make this moment possible.

Let me just say this: it’s clear who the winners are tonight, and that’s the American people. 

Your voice was heard at the ballot box! Your voice!

Listen, I'll be brief, because we have real work to do – and this is not a time for celebration … not when one in 10 of our fellow citizens are out of work … not when we have buried....

Final Gallup Poll sees historic GOP wave into 'uncharted territory' of a 60-seat gain or beyond

The final Gallup Poll before President Obama's first midterm elections Tuesday indicates Republicans are poised to reap historic gains in the House of Representatives, possibly electing twice as many new members as they need to seize control of the chamber where financial legislation originates.

Gallup's latest findings this morning predict Republicans will easily gain the necessary 39 seats to seize control of the House regardless of voter turnout. They predict a minimum GOP gain of 60 seats "with gains well beyond that possible." That kind of rout would be the worst shellacking of a president's party in a half-century.

For comparison, the so-called Republican Revolution of 1994 saw the party....

Is Tuesday looking so bad that even Dennis Kucinich is an endangered species?

Ohio Democratic Rep. Dennis Kucinich is a tough little guy who has bounced up and back from numerous family and political adversities in his 64 years.

He's lived in the family car; shined shoes; been a court clerk, a young Cleveland city councilman, a victorious, obstreperous big-city mayor, a defeated, obstreperous big-city mayor; and, since the Clinton landslide of 1996, an obstreperous House member from Ohio's 10th congressional district.

But for how long?

Now seeking his eighth term, the liberal Kucinich is up against a competitive Republican opponent this time (Peter Corrigan, an area businessman) in a depressed city in a depressed state in a depressing year for Democrats.

You may have read a little something here or there about how bad election day is supposed to be for President Obama's party, even in Ohio, which Obama won, 51% to 47%, in 2008 after losing the primary there to Hillary Clinton, 53% to 45%.

Obama hasn't visited Ohio as often as he golfs. But he's been there enough to know that the continuing high unemployment rate (10%) in the crucial battleground state is helping to....

No Obama steam, Gallup's generic congressional poll finds; Republican lead holding strong 15 days out

Despite optimistic talk and  President Obama's nearly constant transcontinental campaign carbon footprint, a new Gallup Poll today finds Republicans holding a strong lead in the generic congressional poll among registered voters or likely voters, in big ballot turnouts and lesser ones for the Nov. 2 voting.

With but two weeks left before Obama's first midterm verdict, for the third straight week the Gallup Poll finds registered voters choosing the GOP over the Democrats, 48% to 43%. Among the now more important category of likely voters, Republicans have built a lead ranging from 11 points to 17 points.

According to Gallup, the wide disparity in the findings indicates Nancy Pelosi's days as House speaker are numbered, indicating a likely turnover of control to Republicans, at....

Quietly, America's Election Day becomes Election Month -- and you're in it right now

Exactly four weeks from today media consumers across the country will be treated to some of the most timeworn visual cliches in American history:

Smiling congenitally optimistic candidates doing their democratic duty at the polls, often with a spouse at hand, usually early in the day before a hovering pack of cameras and reporters so the images can be distributed as timely reminders to supporters to get out to the polls before they close.

And then in the evening TV will bring us live reports from nascent victory parties around town, at least half of which will end up as political funerals.

Between now and then we'll hear much in the media about President Obama, Vice President Biden and First Lady Michelle Obama spending....