Best Kasich Scenario

Will Ohio GOP Gov. John Kasich go over the heads of the Tea Party and issue an executive order implementing Obamacare's Medicaid expansion?

The possibility was first reported by the Columbus Dispatch. “We continue to explore all our options and just want to get this done," Kasich spokesman Robert Nichols told TPM in an email Wednesday. 

Here's how it would work, according to the Dispatch: Kasich would expand Medicaid eligiblity to 133 percent of the federal poverty level, as Obamacare prescribes, via an executive order. He would then, on Oct. 21, ask a seven-member legislative-spending oversight panel for the authority to spend the money that the federal government would provide the state to pay for the expansion. 

“The governor, I think, has the authority to do that,” Ohio Senate President Keith Faber (R) told the Dispatch Wednesday. “It’s certainly within his prerogative. I’m a defender of legislative rights, and I would think the better solution would be a legislative option, but the governor does have that authority." 

Medicaid expansion would cover roughly 275,000 additional Ohioans.

The Ohio Tea Party will go completely insane, and I can't wait for that battle to play out.  Kasich may be a misogynist corporate lobbyist jackass, but he knows enlightened self-interest when he sees it.  I say let him do it...then replace him with a Democrat.

Things may get very interesting across the river soon.