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John Kasich Hard-Hitting Speech. Aired 10:30-11a ET

Aired April 12, 2016 - 10:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[10:32:58] CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: And good morning. I'm Carol Costello. Thank you so much for joining me.

Lots of live events happening right now here in New York City. Both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders hitting the trail. We're watching both of their events.

But first let's talk about John Kasich because at any minute now we're expecting the governor to deliver remarks in New York City. These are live pictures of that event. Kasich now gearing up for what he says will be a hard-hitting speech that targets his rivals. Last night the governor told CNN he'll address the two paths facing voters -- one that feeds on people's fear, the other focused on problem solving.

So let's get right to CNN Politics executive editor Mark Preston and CNN's Phil Mattingly.

Phil, to you first. You're at the Kasich event. So give us a preview.

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, that's right, Carol. Here in Midtown Manhattan, in just a couple of minutes, Governor John Kasich expected to come out and as you noted, laying out two pathways in these remarks. He's never going to mention Donald Trump or Ted Cruz's name but he will provide a rather vivid contrast between his vision for the road forward and theirs, calling theirs a path to darkness, and going through a list of their policy prescriptions that we've seen over the last couple of months has really taken them apart one by one.

Carol, this is a big moment for John Kasich. We know where he stands when it comes to delegate math. And we know that he has a long road to climb and can only really climb it in an open convention. But aides have been pushing John Kasich to make this speech for a number of months now. They believe that he is a candidate that does appeal to the broader electorate and the broader Republican Party. He just needs that moment. That's what they'll be shooting for in this speech today -- Carol.

COSTELLO: Well, one of the questions is, will that moment come here in the state of New York, Mark, because a new poll came out. If my executive producer can remind me where the poll came from. Baruch College. It came from Baruch College. And it said that Trump has now broken 60 percent support in the state of New York. John Kasich is running second, though, and Ted Cruz third. So can John Kasich's speech possibly matter? MARK PRESTON, CNN POLITICS EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR: Well, what John Kasich

is trying to do is to try to justify why he remains in the race.

[10:35:05] There's no way he's going to win New York. If anything he would hope to try to pick up a few delegates. But with all these questions right now, Carol, about why is John Kasich still in this contest, he has only won one state. That was his home state of Ohio. We saw him shut out this past weekend in Colorado. And, you know, John Kasich, really, I think Phil says it -- encapsulized it, this is a pivotal moment for his campaign. And last night we saw him tried to show the softer side of himself, maybe open himself up a little bit to the voters. And this was kind of a touching moment between him and his daughters.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

EMMA KASICH, DAUGHTER OF JOHN KASICH: He just tries to tell jokes that he thinks are funny but --

(LAUGHTER)

E. KASICH: They're mostly just funny to us because they're dumb.

COOPER: Spoken like every 16-year-old daughter to a parent.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And he also thinks he's a really good dancer.

COOPER: Uh-oh.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: So north-south.

GOV. JOHN KASICH (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: North-south, that's exactly right.

COOPER: Wait, north-south? Is that his move?

REESE KASICH, JOHN KASICH'S DAUGHTER: Yes.

E. KASICH: Yes.

KASICH: Well, you have to go north and south even though you can't do this, you know, over bite. You have to go north south and --

COOPER: Wow.

KASICH: Yes. Yes, it's very -- and I'm really, really good. Just kidding. Don't you think, Reese? I've gotten better.

R. KASICH: Yes, but you're not going to go on "Dancing with the Stars."

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PRESTON: And there you have it. John Kasich last night with his family. Look, we're out of time in the campaign as well. Not only for John Kasich but for Donald Trump and Ted Cruz where we know where they stand on the issues. The question is right now, are they likable enough to the electorate and can they execute on what they say that they can do. There is a political knife fight as we know going on in this Republican presidential primary. John Kasich hopes that Ted Cruz and Donald Trump beat each other up so much that he could come out at the end.

COSTELLO: OK. He's counting on those candidates to be negative so I want to go back to Phil Mattingly if I can.

Phil, can you still hear me? So that softer side of John has kind of been working for him, but how negative will he go today?

MATTINGLY: He walks a very thin line, Carol. Right? The point of his campaign and one that he and his aides talk about constantly is he's not willing to sling the mud. They want to have a fight on the issues, they want to have a fight on the policies. That's the contrast they want to provide, not talking about families, not going in that direction or having Twitter wars.

But to your point, though, this starts to undercut one of the grand themes of his campaign. At the same time if you look at where he stands in this race, there's no question that he has to do something. You've seen the elbows sharpen out of Kasich and his team over the last couple of weeks, and I think you're going to see that on full display here today.

COSTELLO: So if he really wants to hit hard, Mark, he's going to have to say more than, you know, voting for Trump and Cruz is the path to darkness.

PRESTON: Right, and he has to convince a Republican electorate that has yet to embrace its candidacy that he is the person that cannot only help when the presidency but also help Republicans down the ballot. That's really the untold story we haven't been talking about in this presidential race, but whoever is going to be at the top of the Republican ticket as well as the Democratic ticket, there are reverberations that are going to go through all throughout this election when we're looking at control of the U.S. Senate, the U.S. House of Representatives, and all the way down into state House races.

John Kasich has been unable up to this point to get the real conservative wing behind him. So that's where he really needs to make a play.

COSTELLO: That's a tougher. You know, we always say John Kasich is a moderate -- but he's not. He's a conservative Republican. Yes?

PRESTON: You know, I had this conversation with Trent Lott, you know, about eight or nine months ago. Now he's a former Senate majority leader. At the time he was considered an ultra Republican. Now he will tell you that he is considered somebody that is too far to the left. The base of the Republican Party has really gone so far right. As has the base of the Democratic Party. We are seeing this polarization right now in politics that we haven't seen before, and to your point, John Kasich is really not that liberal by any stretch of the imagination. COSTELLO: So, you know, when all is said and done, Phil, what Kasich

really wants is he wants to be able to get to that convention with Donald Trump and Ted Cruz so bloodied that the delegates will say, you know what? If we want to win, we've got to choose John Kasich. Is that what he's really hoping to do today with this speech?

MATTINGLY: He's trying to elevate his profile. He wants to get to the convention floor where 2,400 delegates are going to look around, see what Ted Cruz and Donald Trump represent, and decide John Kasich is the guy that can win in November, who consistently rose at polls that showed him beating Hillary Clinton head-to-head. And what Mark laid out I think is one of the more important elements. The elements that his team has been presenting to fundraisers constantly behind the scenes. And that is, look down the ballot, look at the Senate, look at the House.

John Kasich is the one who can protect both of those. The Republican majority on both of those. Today is the moment where he tries to show the donors, where he tries to show the potential delegates, really professional Republicans in large part, that he is the alternative and that he can actually win in November.

[10:40:04] That's the key point he's been trying to make behind the scenes. Now he tries to really elevate that point today, Carol.

COSTELLO: OK. Let's talk a little bit more about donors because we were wondering this morning, Mark, where John Kasich's money was coming from and how much money he had to go on.

PRESTON: Well, you know, certainly at this point, it's interesting. I had this conversation with him before the New Hampshire primary and his --

COSTELLO: Let's listen to John Kasich. Thanks, Mark.

KASICH: Thank you, and thank you to the Women's National Republican Club. It's great to be here this morning.

You know, this is really a wonderful and historic clubhouse. The organization is so steeped in history of its own as well as in the history of the city, our party, and the country. The Women's National Republican Club was founded by leaders of the suffrage movement. With the new voting rights in mind, the clubhouse was intended to be a place where women could meet and share knowledge about political issues so as to be better informed participants, of course, in the electoral process.

As new voters, women could participate in the choice between candidates and their ideas. It is in that spirit that I speak to all of you today. I'm going to talk about the choice America faces in this election, and it's, frankly, a choice between two paths. Two very different paths. And as we make this choice, don't kid yourself -- the entire world is watching. The world is watching because America is civilization's brightest beacon. Freedom-loving people depend on our leadership for peace and for stability. Civilizations' enemies only seek -- only seek for us to fail. You know, presidents come. Presidents go. And while a president does

really matter, it's the democratic principles that have made us that leader for more than two centuries and have been sturdy enough to transcend political and ideological differences, a civil war, two world wars, and a century of technological and societal upheaval. Through it all, we have remained history's greatest force for good because we've stayed true to who we are: One nation under God with liberty and justice for all. T

This election may well be one of the most consequential of many generations because the next president will face so many complex pressures, both from within and from without. They will force tough decisions from not only our leaders but from every one of us. And we won't always like our options. The issues we confront -- from fighting ISIS, handling Russia, China, North Korea, and the Middle East, to addressing displaced workers, civil rights, the new plague of drug addiction at home, as well as slow economic growth and rising debt. Think about it. They're all critical.

The importance of making the right choices certainly cannot be understated. It can overload us if we let it, but even in the face of this multitude of complex, thorny problems, clarity can emerge. From the fog of anxiety, the seemingly endless choices can be reduced, and then reduced again, and then reduced again. And they eventually are whittled down to just two.

And here they are. Will we turn our backs on the ideals of America that have seen us through more than two centuries? Or are we going to reaffirm that America is, in Ronald Reagan's words, this last best hope for man on earth?

Ladies and gentlemen, this is our choice. For some, the challenges we face, the myriad choices, the potential changes that each decision presents, it could and it may be in some sense has given rise to fear or anger and, of course, that can be polarizing. The response for some is to retreat into the past to yearn for the way things used to be. To these people, today's America is only seen as a broken place, and the people who did the breaking are the other people with more money or less money, people with different sounding last names or different religious believes or different colored skin or lifestyles or whatever. You get the idea.

We have been told that because of all the this change, America has become dark, that we have succumbed and that we are no longer strong. We are told that we are no longer respected in the world. In fact, we're even told that foreign governments are actually controlling our destiny because they have become smarter than us and tougher than us.

This picture of America in economic and moral decline is, of course, always followed up with warnings of our impending destruction. For many Americans, these fears and this outlook are as real as the building we are in today. And the anger they cause is real. It is true we are fighters in America, but we fight for what is good. We fight for what is right. And when we do that, we win, don't we? We win. And don't let anyone ever tell you otherwise. When we come together, when we unite as a country, America always wins. For those who are angry or afraid, I want to assure there' is another

better way to deal with this. Some who feed off of the fears and the anger that is felt by some of us, and exploited, feed their own insatiable desires for fame or attention. That could drive America down into a ditch and not make us great again. Just as disturbing are the solutions they offer. We've heard proposals to create a religious test for immigration, to target neighborhoods for surveillance, to deport 11.5 million people, to impose draconian tariffs which would crush trade and destroy American jobs.

We have heard proposals to drop out of NATO, abandon Europe to Russia, possibly use nuclear weapons in Europe, and end our defense partnerships in Asia, and tell our Middle East allies that they have to go it alone. We've been offered hollow promises -- to impose a value added tax, balance budgets through simple and whimsical cuts in waste, fraud, and abuse. There is no office that has the title of waste, fraud, and abuse.

We have been promised that unpopular laws shall be repealed simply through the will of a strong man in the White House, and that the Supreme Court justices will be empowered with some new extra constitutional ability to investigate former public officials.

I've stood on a stage and watched with amazement as candidates wallowed in the mud, viciously attacked one another, called each other liars and disparaged each other's character. Those who continuously push that type of behavior are not worthy of the office they are seeking.

(APPLAUSE)

As for me, as I have said repeatedly, I will not take the low road to the highest office in the land. I will simply not do it.

(APPLAUSE)

Just as an all consuming fear of America in decline ends in visions of America's destruction, a political strategy based on exploiting Americans instead of lifting them up inevitably leads to divisions, paranoia, isolation, and promises that can never, ever be fulfilled. I say to you that this path to darkness is the antithesis of all that America has meant for 240 years. Some have a different response to the pressures they see bearing down on America and themselves. It would never occur to me that America would break, or could break, from challenges to our economy or to our security. We harden with resolve through ingenuity and coming together. We can't sit by and expect fate or destiny to sweep in and rescue us. You see, we always roll up our sleeves and get to work when the going gets tough. And we have never, never, ever seen the American spirit fail.

America's strength as that we're bound by shared ideas, by communities and families and people who are free, creative, and giving. This is what makes America great, not some politician or some law. The spirit of our country rests in us -- you and you and you, all of us.

And notwithstanding all of our challenges, America is still great. Take any measure, whether it's life expectancy, medicine, nutrition, technology, innovation, transportation, or even economic power, America's economy is still the largest and most productive in the world. We're bigger than the next two economies, China and Japan, combined. America still leads the world in making things. America is among the largest exporters of goods and services in the entire world. America is home to six of the top ten universities in the world. America is the world's innovator, the world's inventor, and we lead in intellectual property. Don't let anybody, particularly a politician, tell you that America is not great.

That doesn't mean we aren't capable of drifting. We can drift, and we have been. And too many Americans are still being left behind, or are making it but feel betrayed by a system that's become too big to fail. Too many feel that government and politicians have betrayed them. There are a lot of Americans who ask why is there no one speaking for me? Why is it no one is working for us? Why is it you hear all these promises from politicians and nothing ever comes from it?

And of course, those who are concerned about this are right. For too long politicians have been making promises based upon polling, focus groups, or what is politically expedient. This is not leadership, ladies and gentlemen. Leadership is the willingness to walk a lonely road with a team of people with their eyes fixed on the horizon, focused on solving problems and healing our country.

(APPLAUSE)

Leading is serving. You know there is a better, higher path. True leadership means pursuing it, even if it's hard. The sacrifice is part of the job, however, because leaders can't lead unless they're servants first. To run for president, you have to respect the dignity of a job where close to 320 million people depend on you.

(APPLAUSE)

Our campaigns should be full of ideas that provide energy and solutions, innovations and excitement for whatever office we're running for, because we all have to look our family in the eyes and know that we raised the bar. I want to be able to look at my wife, and my daughters, in the eyes and know that they're proud of me and the type of campaign that we are running. American leadership is at its finest when it buckles on that irrepressible can-do spirit that says anything is possible, and that everyone can participate in America's blessings.

You see, I have no doubt that we can restore our economy. We can rebuild our military. We can make America safe from terrorism and reengage as the leader in the world again. We can do this with reasonable and proven solutions rooted in the American ideals that have seen us through tough days before. The proven solutions, ladies and gentlemen, are right in front of us. And we know what needs to be done. There's no better and quicker cure to America's challenges than to grow the economy and stimulate private sector job creation. To have the resources to solve problems, we need economic strength.

In the 1990s, when we balanced the federal budget, paid down the federal debt, or a large portion of it, cut taxes and created surpluses, the result was a sustained period of economic growth, lower interest rates, job creation, and national prosperity. We weren't talking about income inequality or the lack of wage increases -- because it was happening. Businesses were growing. Unemployment was at historic lows, and nearly everyone who wanted a job could find one. In fact, the labor market became a buyer's market for the job seeker.

But this was no small feat. Think for a moment about what we did. For the first time since Americans walked on the moon, the federal government had a balanced budget. For the first time since man had walked on the moon, we finally got it done. And we didn't only balance the budget, we were also able to reform welfare, and -- which ended generational dependency. We reformed the Pentagon to strengthen our defenses. We cut the capital gains tax and we did much more.

You know, I tell younger audiences about this and they look at me like I'm crazy. They don't believe it ever happens. But we know that it did and it can happen again. It just takes leadership, the will to challenge the status quo and a willingness to work across the aisle.

(APPLAUSE)

Yes, we have to be willing to work also with the other party. You see, I think Americans are not only fed up with what Washington is not doing, but I think they're also tired to the partisan bickering. And that doesn't mean you compromise your principles. You know, Ronald Reagan worked with Tip O'Neill. No one ever accused the Gipper of giving up his principles, even though he accomplished things. But that's because Ronald Reagan was a leader.

And, folks, I want to remind you of that period of time. In 1994, the Republicans captured the House and the Senate and had a majority for the first time in 40 years. The people who showed up in that Congress during that period could care less about polling, focus groups, reelection or anything else. They came committed to building a stronger America. And when you think about it, balancing a budget, cutting taxes, paying down debt, reforming welfare, reforming the Pentagon and building the military strength, all that got accomplished in a short period of time because we threw politics out the window and we were focused on helping the American people. That's what leaders need to do.

(APPLAUSE)

One of the things that I've learned through this campaign is it's the job of a leader to first slow down. We all need to slow down and listen to others who sometimes are never listened to. And we need to listen carefully. Then you set an agenda that meets America's needs, and you bring everybody together to make it a reality. There is no place for dividing, polarizing, pointing fingers, or trading on short term political gain.

I hold to this philosophy of a leadership because I've watched great leaders practice it. They've been successful. And, frankly, I've seen it work in my own experience. I worked for ten years to pass that balanced budget. It was hard work. And when I became chairman of the Budget Committee, our team was able to get it done even with a Democrat in the White House. We were proud when we reformed welfare and, as a member of the Armed Services Committee, we all came together to reform the Pentagon and realign our military services that resulted in a central command structure that allowed the services to work together.

And frankly, it's the same formula that we have used in Ohio. We were facing an $8 billion deficit and we had lost 350,000 jobs. In a few short years, we turned that deficit into a surplus of $2 billion and gave Ohioans the largest tax cut of any state in the country.

(APPLAUSE)

We even repealed the death tax. Ohio ha now created 417,000 private sector jobs, up from the loss of 350,000, and it's working. And we continue to work to make sure that no one is left behind.

This can work for America again as well. And ladies and gentlemen, today across our country, when a politician's lips are moving, people think that they're being lied to.

[11:00:00] You see, a lot of people have wondered why does he keep talking about what he has done? Why?