For America to have any hope of averting fiscal collapse, the GOP presidential nominee will need to win Ohio in less than 11 months. Each day of Ohio Republican Party (ORP) infighting improves the odds for President Obama and Senator Sherrod Brown, redistributionist extraordinaire.

I’ve already given my two cents on the conflict between ORP chair Kevin DeWine and Governor Kasich, so I won’t belabor this point: DeWine should step down. I do not assume Kasich’s team is blameless, but the criticisms Ohio House Speaker Batchelder shared earlier this month cannot be discounted. Whoever threw the first stone, a public disagreement of this scope between a governor and a party chairman doesn’t leave many options.

My position was affirmed by an Ohio News Network (ONN) interview airing yesterday and covered in Friday’s Columbus Dispatch. The Dispatch story ran under the headline “Kasich’s staff used in effort to oust DeWine,” which says everything you need to know about how destructive a prolonged fight would be:

In an exclusive interview, Ohio Republican Party Chairman Kevin DeWine revealed that members of Gov. John Kasich’s staff were used in an ongoing effort to oust DeWine as head of the party.

So now Ohio’s Republican chairman is conducting opposition research against the sitting Republican governor and using it to criticize the governor’s staff on television. This makes a great headline and terrific fodder for leftists dying to smear Governor Kasich, even though the political activity in question was conducted on the staffers’ time off.

From the ONN segment:

Jim Heath, ONN: Even if Kasich’s team receives a majority of the seats in the central committee next March, DeWine says he will not step down.

DeWine: I’m going to be the chairman of the party through January 2013.

With three years remaining in his first term, Governor Kasich has already balanced a miserable state budget without raising taxes and shown a keen ability to make Ohio more employer-friendly. Another year with Chairman DeWine is a less exciting prospect for anyone interested in showing Sherrod Brown and Barack Obama the door.

Cross-posted from that hero, RedState and Big Government.

Not that it matters to the handout-junkies and bureaucracy-lovers who make up the Democratic Party’s base, but the House has passed a second bill to extend the federal debt ceiling. In case you’ve forgotten, the House is controlled by the Grand Old Party of No, and the world is going to end if the debt ceiling isn’t raised by Tuesday.

Here’s the president’s Treasury Secretary on the need for an extension that runs through Obama’s reelection campaign:

“The most important thing is that we remove this threat of default from the country for the next 18 months,” Geithner said in an interview with CNN’s “State of the Union” program. “You want to take this out of politics.”

Emphasis mine; this could be the Freudian slip of the year. Democrats don’t want to take the politics out of the debt ceiling fight – they want to take the debt ceiling fight out of the nation’s political conversation. Eventually, voters will realize President Obama’s fix is higher taxes, and Senator Reid’s fix is gutting the military.

Isn’t it funny how, time and again, the adults in Washington demand policies identical to the far left’s? Let’s review:

• World ends without debt ceiling increase
• House Republicans pass Cut, Cap & Balance bill
• Reid, Obama say Cut, Cap & Balance is DOA
• Obama pushes for tax hikes
• Reid suggests slashing defense spending
• House Republicans pass Budget Control Act of 2011
• Reid, Obama say Budget Control Act of 2011 is DOA

As I said this morning, compromising sucks when the other side is nuts, but this is what House Republicans have to deal with.

A debt ceiling compromise beats the prospect of a second Obama term by a landslide the size of Texas. I’m glad Congressman Stivers, my representative in the House, voted for the Budget Control Act of 2011. I’m glad Speaker Boehner, my parents’ representative, worked to create a bill the shameless demagogues in the Senate and White House might be forced to pass.

Official releases on the Budget Control Act of 2011 follow. From Stivers:

“I supported Speaker Boehner’s bill because it cuts spending and changes the way that Washington works. It puts caps on spending and moves America toward a balanced budget. A default could result in economic disaster including higher costs for car, student and business loans as well as mortgages; it could result in lower stock prices; higher gasoline and import costs and higher unemployment. This scenario is unacceptable and moving forward Members of both parties need to work together toward reaching an agreement on the debt ceiling to prevent a default.”

From Boehner:

Thanks in part to your support, this evening the House passed an important bill to cut trillions in spending and end our debt limit crisis.

It’s the second time in the last two weeks that the People’s House has spoken. Twice now, we’ve passed legislation to cut trillions in government spending, avoid a job-crushing national default, and advance the cause of a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution.

In contrast, Washington Democrats have done nothing. They refuse to put a plan on the table. In fact, it’s been 821 days since the Democrat-run Senate has passed a budget.

Let me be clear, our bill isn’t perfect, but it’s a positive step forward, carefully negotiated in a good faith effort to find a solution to the current crisis.

Now it is time for the Senate to act. The Senate must pass the House bill and send it to the President for him to sign into law. There is no excuse for inaction.

Follow me on Twitter: @jasonahart

Cross-posted at that hero and Third Base Politics.

Since I cheered on Speaker Boehner a week ago, I feel compelled to offer some support to Congressman Jordan today – although, to paraphrase a great motivator, my support and a nickel will get you a hot cup of jack squat.

In the debt ceiling debate the GOP is fighting demagogues who live and breathe class warfare, and would sing the virtues of increased spending to the point of bankruptcy. It’s understandable that, given the circumstances, tensions have been high between conservative Republican Study Committee (RSC) leader Jim Jordan and Speaker Boehner.

Was it dumb for an RSC staffer to send out a list of Republicans targeted for supporting Boehner? Probably; I’ve seen some annoyingly divisive GOP vs. GOP messaging the past couple of days. But, I doubt it would be easier for Boehner to sell a compromise if Jordan and fellow conservatives were quick to abandon Cut, Cap & Balance.

I can say confidently that feeding anonymous quotes like these to reporters is a bad call:

Two Republican sources deeply involved in configuring new Ohio congressional districts confirmed to The Dispatch today  that Jordan’s disloyalty to Boehner has put him in jeopardy of being zeroed out of a district.

“Jim Jordan’s boneheadedness has kind of informed everybody’s thinking,” said one of the sources, both of whom spoke only on condition of anonymity. “The easiest option for everybody has presented itself.”

[...]

“He doesn’t know it, but he solved a problem for Republican line-drawers by (figuratively) standing up and saying, ‘I’m a jerk and I deserve to be punished,’ ” said one of the sources.

[...]

“The downside of being in an uber-safe district is you often don’t develop the strategic skills you need to survive in the arena and in this case that is going to be painfully evident to Jim Jordan.”

Are there really two GOP insiders who don’t realize this plays perfectly into the leftist narrative of principled conservatives as extremist cranks? Fortunately, Boehner and Jordan appear capable of acting like adults after the RSC email debacle:

“Jim Jordan and I may not always agree on strategy, but we are friends and allies, and the word retribution is not in my vocabulary,” Boehner said. “I look forward to continuing to serve with him in the U.S. House after the redistricting process in Ohio is complete.”

Meghan Snyder, Jordan’s spokeswoman, said, “We would hope that standing strong in favor of lowering spending and balancing the federal budget would not be a reason to eliminate the district of a sitting member of Congress.”

Yes, compromising sucks when the other side is nuts, but the Senate and the White House would be happy to keep spending until the whole contraption caves in. Let’s not rush to shoot ourselves in the foot while Harry Reid and Barack Obama have America’s military over a barrel!

[Update: Corrected a (boneheaded?) typo in paragraph two.]

Follow me on Twitter: @jasonahart

Cross-posted at that hero and Third Base Politics.

Fair readers, mark your calendars: this is the day I prove what a warm, fuzzy moderate I am. This is the day I agree with Thomas Friedman.

Because he’s such an impeccable centrist, Friedman opened Tuesday’s column by criticizing politicians in both parties:

There is something crazy about what is going on in our country today. Our fiscal condition continues on an unsustainable path, the European currency is heading for a crackup, the Arab world is in the midst of a crackup, unemployment is creeping upward and basically our two parties are telling us that they will not make the reforms that we know are necessary because it would involve too much pain and could imperil their chances of winning the presidency in 2012.

Now, if you’re wondering which of Tom’s ideas I agree with… we’ll get there. First I wanted to let Friedman’s own words illustrate that he has never heard of Congressman Paul Ryan, and is oblivious to unified Republican support for Ryan’s budget proposal. Strange things for a New York Times columnist to be in the dark about, given the fit Paul Krugman pitches at the mention of Ryan’s name.

Since friends have to be brutally honest in this flat, hot, crowded, crazy world, I’d also like to ask my new pal Tom whether this is what an unemployment rate “creeping upward” looks like -

Enough senseless bickering over a few hundred billion dollars and a few million measly jobs! Let’s hear Tom’s solution to the partisan divide in America today.

That’s right. We need to do four things at once: spend, cut, tax and invest. And unless we do all four at once we’re not going to break out of our slow decline. But to do all four at once will require a new hybrid politics, which does not conform to the political agenda of either major party.

A new hybrid politics! Like all Friedman readers, I am on board for anything that is both new and hybrid!

Maybe it is just my friends, but I find more and more people completely disgusted by this situation and looking for a serious Third Party candidate who could run in 2012 and deliver the shock therapy to the corrupt, encrusted, two-party duopoly now running the show in America.

Such a Third Party would have a simple agenda: 1) Inject a short-term stimulus. 2) Enact Simpson-Bowles. 3) Shrink our presence in Afghanistan. 4) Raise automobile mileage standards. 5) Impose a gasoline tax to pay for a massive increase in government-supported scientific research and a carbon tax to pay for new infrastructure and stimulate clean-power innovation.

Yes, Thomas Friedman! Please convince the Democrats who take you seriously that America’s troubles could be solved by – to use your numbering:

1. More failed deficit spending
2. Modest entitlement cuts and not-so-modest tax hikes
3. Something President Obama is already doing with widespread support, given our leaders’ disinterest in defining any sort of “mission” or “goals”
4. Government-increased car prices
5. Government-increased fuel prices for new government energy boondoggles

I give this plan a five out of five for getting America on the right track! Not because any of Friedman’s ideas are especially new or good, but because a monied far-left candidate hawking what Friedman suggests would pull away enough Obama supporters to ensure a Republican landslide in 2012. More than at any point in my brief memory (I wasn’t quite old enough to vote in 2000 – do the math) the GOP, led by Paul Ryan, is taking the side of freedom over the sort of European statism Thomas Friedman endorses.

In a way, it’s impressive that Friedman managed to write an entire article about the need for a Progressive third party without once mentioning the tea party movement. In another way, it’s sad that one of the left’s allegedly great thinkers is so invested in his own spunky originality that he can’t give credit where it’s due.

Follow me on Twitter: @jasonahart

Cross-posted from that hero.