Former congressman Robert Walker of Pennsylvania, a supporter of Governor John Kasich’s presidential campaign, appeared on Breitbart News Daily on SiriusXM with host Stephen K. Bannon to discuss Kasich’s “strong” chances in the Keystone State and his alliance he formed with fellow candidate Ted Cruz.
Walker cited Kasich’s “experience both having a balanced budget in Washington, and then having a very successful gubernatorial time in Ohio, winning 86 of 88 counties in his re-election” as reasons for Pennsylvania voters to choose him.
“That’s the kind of experience that I think should be carried into the fall election, and gives us the best chance of beating Hillary Clinton,” said Walker. “The polls almost unanimously show that he’s the one candidate who can beat Hillary Clinton in the fall.”
Walker thought the rules from the 2012 Republican National Convention, which would block Kasich from consideration in any round of voting because he will not win the majority of delegates in at least eight states, would not apply to the 2016 convention. “Even if those rules are in place, you can still be nominated from the floor of the convention,” he said.
“We believe, based on a lot of the work that we’ve done, that when you get to second and perhaps third ballots, the Kasich ability to beat Hillary Clinton will be the thing that the delegates will decide is the most important,” Walker predicted. “Therefore, we think he is very competitive, and has every reason to continue in the fight.”
He said Kasich’s “in-depth foreign policy experience,” gleaned from 18 years on the House Armed Services Committee, and a domestic agenda that is “very much in line with where the American people are” would make Kasich ideally suited to defeating the Democrat nominee.
“He’s actually put forward a budget that gets us to balance by the end of his second term,” said Walker. “He’s actually talked about a comprehensive foreign policy that goes all the way from the South China Sea, across the Middle East, into Europe. He’s put forward plans for restructuring and reform of government that will take us into the 21st Century. It’s all those kinds of things that Hillary Clinton won’t be able to do, because she will be bound to the record of the Obama Administration, and she will be unable to take us forward.”
Walker said the formal alliance between the Kasich and Cruz campaigns demonstrated that Cruz “recognizes now that the whole battle is at the convention — that Donald Trump will certainly get to the convention, but may not have enough votes when he gets there, so Cruz is recognizing that the two need to work together, to make certain that there can be a convention battle.”
“What they decided to do was not to expend resources in these states. They did not decide to give up their votes,” he said of the agreement between Kasich and Cruz. “The alliance, going forward, will be an ability to conserve resources by emphasizing the campaigns in certain states, and de-emphasizing the campaigns in other states.”
Walker expected Kasich to do “very well” in southeast Pennsylvania, while Trump would do well in the Northeast, and Cruz would score in the middle of the state. “The outcome will depend on who is strongest in the western part of the state,” he said. “There, I think it’s between Kasich and Trump.”
“I think there’s a real chance for us to finish at least a strong second,” he said of the Pennsylvania contest. “In some of the other states, like Rhode Island and Maryland, we’ve been running pretty strong. We may have a chance of eking out a win, in one or the other of those states.”
Anticipating a less encouraging day for the Cruz campaign, Walker said Cruz’s “momentum was broken in New York, and that’s the reason why he sees the necessity for teaming up with John Kasich — because there are a lot of states ahead where Kasich has a very strong appeal.”
“When we get out to the West, the fact is that Oregon and Washington are places that are probably more in tune with John Kasich than they are with Ted Cruz.”
Breitbart News Daily airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 weekdays from 6:00AM to 9:00AM EST.
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