BURLINGAME, California — GOP presidential candidate Ohio Gov. John Kasich admits his campaign “isn’t working out” during the primary election but argues he can win in the general election with Democrat, Hispanic, and African American voters.
“It isn’t working out right now, but you look at the national polls, when everybody gets to vote, it’s a different story,” Kasich told reporters before he spoke at the California GOP Convention in Burlingame, California.
Do the Republicans actually think that they win an election by scaring every Hispanic in this country to death? Scaring them to the point that they’re afraid their families are going to be torn apart and disrupted? Do you have any idea what those folks are going to do in a general election? How about our friends in the African American community? How do they feel about this stuff? About this division and separation.
During the press conference, Kasich took aim at GOP frontrunner Donald Trump.
“Now, I’ve stopped complaining, but frankly, I was invisible until about eight weeks ago and even despite the fact that I’ve received over 70 newspaper endorsements and Trump’s got one… and just getting the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce,” Kasich touted.
Look this country has never been great when we fight with one another. This country has been great when people come together. They can accept one another’s differences and at the end of the day do something to help their children and their grandchildren have a better life and even help themselves at the same time.
“The logical question is how can he win a general if he can’t win a primary? Because right now, people are in a mood of fear and anger,” he said.
“I got upset this morning when I’m reading that the Congress of the United States can’t figure out how to allocate enough money to fight the Zika virus,” Kasich said, then turning his attention to blasting the anti-Trump protesters who clashed with police earlier in the day.
When you live on the negative side, when you feed people’s anger, do you see what happened here today? I heard about it. People chaining themselves to a fence. Do you see what’s happening? I may not be winning those votes right now, but over time I believe that people like to live where they can be hopeful, where they believe that this country can be better, where they believe that at the end they need to have somebody that’s had the experience and somebody that can unite the country. That’s why I win in a general and I may not be winning in these primaries, although I’ve been in second place in the last six primaries. It’s starting to resonate.