“You know how polarized everything is,” he said. “We’ve got to be real about things. And what I don’t want to see is more fighting and more recrimination, which is exactly what we’re going see.”
One day after Justice Antonin Scalia died in his sleep in West Texas, Sunday talk shows focused heavily on his replacement on the high court, with Republicans arguing that such a decision should be held off until the next president is elected. For his part, President Barack Obama has signaled that he will pick a replacement.
“Let’s just wait for an election, move beyond it and then whoever we pick as a justice and gets confirmed, we’ll have broad consensus across the country and can start the healing process,” Kasich urged.
Later, on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” he said while it was Obama’s prerogative to nominate someone and the Senate’s prerogative to confirm or reject that nominee, “it’d just be great if the president didn’t send somebody forward and we had an election and then everybody would be clear about what they want in the next Supreme Court Justice.”
“But I guess it’s not going to go that way,” he said.
On “This Week,” Kasich said if the decision is kicked to the next president, he’s prepared: He’s appointed well more than 100 to the court in Ohio, including Ohio Supreme Court Justice Judith L. French, and “she turned out to be a great justice.”
“This is not an unfamiliar process to me,” he said, saying he would look for someone who is “above reproach” and “a constitutionalist.”
It was a double-header for Kasich as well as fellow GOP presidential candidates Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, billionaire Donald Trump and Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida: All appeared both on ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos,” and on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
On “Meet the Press,” Kasich reiterated his Saturday argument that the U.S. should not get involved in civil wars.
He said the U.S. made “a terrible mistake” when it got involved in a civil war in Libya that ultimately deposed Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.
“The guy was working with us,” he said. “And now we’ve created chaos in that country.”
He said his philosophy also extends to Syria, where he would only go “to destroy ISIS.”
“I would not use U.S. troops to depose Assad but I would support the rebels there,” he said. “It’s okay to support those people who share your view.
But, “For the United States to be embroiled in a civil war in Syria against Assad, I think, is a big mistake.”
The appearances marked the end of a strong week for Kasich, who surprised many pundits by coming in second to Trump in the New Hampshire primary on Tuesday.
He said those in South Carolina have urged him to remain positive, and he’s trying to abide by that.
“People want to know what you’re for,” he said on “Meet the Press.” “I get my energy by being for things I don’t get my energy by being against things.”
Kasich stayed largely out of the fray during a spirited debate Saturday, saying at one point last night that the heated debate “was nuts.”
“It was like a demolition derby,” he told Stephanopoulos, “but the good news is my car’s still going around the circuit.”
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