Will the real Kevin Holtsberry please stand up?

Here’s RedState contributor, former National Review freelance writer, Kevin Holtsberry in 2006:

Conservatives and libertarians love to blast Ohio as a high tax state but ignore the fact that state wide taxes are not that high.

…

The libertarian dream of slashed budgets and minimalist government is not realistic.

Holtsberry today?

Because like the green eye-shade wearers [the media] are, they demand detailed budget scenarios and explanations of how everything will work. They simply can?t fathom how something this big might be accomplished and so they seek to nit-pick it to death.

…

During normal times this would be a risky platform. Ken Blackwell ran an awkward an often off-message campaign but in many ways he had similar elements. He too was arguing for large scale changes and blaming both parties for failing to act. The problem for Blackwell ? outside of the left?s constant demonization ? was that the electorate wasn?t ready for big time change.

Yes, if there’s anything we’ve all agreed on is that the voters in Ohio in 2006 weren’t read for “big time” change even though they nearly swept the Republican Party almost entirely out of the State for the first time in a generation, and then, two years later, swept the Republicans out of control of the Ohio House and the White House. 

Holtsberry’s entire thesis is that everything that made Ken Blackwell radioactive in 2006 makes John Kasich smelling like roses.

Note, the usual Kasich cheerleaders,  like the Carpetblogger from Virginia, are actually citing Holtsberry’s declaration like it’s meaningful… a conservative blogger not named Jon Keeling said Kasich is going to win, therefore, OMGs Kasich is going to win!!

Never mind that Holtsberry’s thesis is based on the assumption that:

Kasich =  Blackwell = VICTORY!!!! 

Because nothing that Holtsberry says takes away from the fundamental assumption that John Kasich really doesn’t come to the table with anything that Ken Blackwell didn’t also have in 2006 except it’s now an incumbent Democratic race as opposed to an open seat.

On top of that, Holtsberry actually thinks the same voters who see “mounting budget deficits”  (even though the state’s budget has been balanced ever year as required under the Constitution) are the same voters who “are not into the inside baseball of technical budget numbers or economic development policy.”  In other words, Holtsberry assumes that voters will only see the negative in Strickland, but the positive in Kasich.  Yeah, such a scenerio does make a Kasich victory likely, but that doesn’t make the scenerio itself likely.  In fact, it’s highly UNLIKELY as evidenced by the recent polling showing Kasich losing ground.

And that’s because the voters don’t believe in the free lunch that Kasich is selling.  They don’t believe you can give a massive tax repeal that isn’t going to cause some pain.  They don’t believe you can eliminate 45% of the State’s budget in a “responsible way” as Kasich routinely claims with no explanation, especially since local governments are already warning of higher local taxes if Kasich’s plan becomes law.

I’m glad that the Kasich cheerleading squad is buying into it Holtsberry’s self-contradicting analysis… it reminds me of the same ideological delusional rationale that conservatives were spouting in trying to justify their denial that Ken Blackwell would barely get over a third of the vote come November.

Oh wait, I forgot:

John Kasich = Ken Blackwell = VICTORY!!!

But victory for whom?