Improbable as it seemed just two months ago, the one remaining “establishment” Republican presidential candidate in the race is John Kasich, whose last name many voters still can’t pronounce. (Try remembering it this way: “Kasich” rhymes with “basic.”) After winning Ohio last Tuesday, Kasich has potentially denied Donald Trump the 1,237 delegates needed to clinch the nomination outright. And he goes into tomorrow’s primaries (in Arizona and Utah) as an antagonist to Ted Cruz, whose quest to close the gap between him and Trump is complicated by Kasich’s continued presence.  But the Ohio governor has amassed only 143 delegates — which means that even if Kasich somehow managed to win every single one of the remaining 1,049 delegates, he would still fall shy of the nomination threshold. Then again, neither Trump nor Cruz is likely to clear the bar, either. Should that prove to be the case, then at the G.O.P. convention in Cleveland this July, all delegates will be free to vote for whomever they wish after the first ballot. And although a convention rule precludes consideration of a candidate who, like Kasich, has failed to win eight states, this provision can possibly be changed.  Why would they do so on behalf of a candidate who has finished well behind his two opponents? The case goes like this: Unlike Trump and Cruz, Kasich has more temperate stances on immigration and social issues, which are less likely to turn off moderates, independents, minorities and young voters. National polls currently show him beating Hillary Clinton in November. He is the governor of a crucial swing state. And the upbeat, inclusive manner Kasich has exhibited on the campaign trail may be the only balm for a bitterly divided Republican electorate.  Yet most party insiders to whom I’ve spoken flatly reject a draft-Kasich movement. Partly this is because he hasn’t earned it. To date he has triumphed only in his home state — which was not a huge surprise, given that he won all 12 of his previous elections (for State Senate, Congress and governor) there. Kasich was something of an absentee candidate in the South and has underperformed in the North and the Midwest outside Ohio. His fund-raising abilities are not especially impressive: He has raised $15.3 million thus far, not much more than the $14.2 million that Marco Rubio raised in the last quarter of last year alone. His quixotically rambling, hug-dispensing campaign manner — the conservative columnist John Podhoretz likened him to a “groovy youth minister” — borrows more from Jimmy Carter than from Ronald Reagan.  Perhaps just as important, conservatives — particularly in the G.O.P. commentariat — do not see Kasich as one of them. No one questioned his fiscal austerity back in 1995, when Newt Gingrich, the speaker of the House, named him chairman of the House Budget Committee. But that was a generation ago. As Ben Domenech, publisher of the conservative web publication The Federalist, observes: “Kasich had the benefit of being in Congress at a unique moment, when the economic boom during the Clinton years allowed him to do what he did. It’s not at all relatable to where we are now.” As governor, Kasich expanded Medicaid benefits in his state, against the wishes of a Republican-controlled Legislature. He also embraced Common Core educational standards and today favors a guest-worker program for illegal immigrants. All of these constitute apostasies to movement conservatives.  But there’s a third layer of resistance to Kasich, one with which Cruz can identify: Many Beltway Republicans don’t like him. I asked the candidate about this a few months ago. “Look, when you balance budgets, you aggravate a lot of people,” he told me. “When you take on tough issues, you’re going to make enemies. And they just wait in the shadows to take a whack at you. But over time, I find when I go back to Washington, there’s respect for what I did as a leader.”  No doubt Chairman Kasich’s strict budgets made life unpleasant for a few lobbyists. But so did his demeanor — which, D.C. veterans say, was often sanctimonious and rude. “John had a reputation,” says Jim Dyer, the former Republican staff director of the Appropriations Committee who counts himself as an admirer, even though the two often tussled on budgetary matters. “When he got upset, he’d really blow up.” Former Representative Dave Hobson, one of Kasich’s closest friends in the Capitol, recalls: “He’d get really upset with you. Then, two or three days later, he’d say, ‘Goddamn it, Dave, you were right about that.’ ” That Kasich is widely regarded as an accomplished legislator distinguishes him from his two remaining rivals. And several of his former congressional colleagues — like Trent Lott, Vin Weber, Ray LaHood and Pete Hoekstra — have endorsed his candidacy. Still, his past behavior has made the pursuit for allies at the Republican convention in July a more arduous one.
The Ohio governor’s only path to the nomination runs through the party’s convention — where he may get a cool reception.