If Kasich runs in 2020, it must be as an independent

Ohio Gov. Kasich says that "all his options are on the table" in 2020.  As I noted recently, his statement that "the Republican party has left him" seems to strongly hint that Kasich- who is term-limited, though still very popular in Ohio- would run as an independent, But, he's been sounding out GOP donors about the possibility of challenging President Trump for the Republican nomination instead.

That would be a huge mistake.

Something like 85% of rank-and-file Republicans support Mr. Trump. Yes, the party of Lincoln has become that contaminated by everything Lincoln opposed. Even if the Mueller investigation (which the overwhelming majority of Americans support, despite the scorn of most Republicans) goes bad for the president in a big way, or if the expected Democratic landslide this November is disastrous enough for Republicans to start looking for options to Mr. Trump, the Republican party has changed. Like the Democratic party, its center- Kasich's natural constituency- has vanished. Today's Republican rank-and-file is as crazy right as the Democratic rank-and-file is crazy left. Neither party has room for a centrist of any description. If the GOP soured on President Trump, it would certainly turn to someone like Vice-President Pence or Sen. Ted Cruz. The coalition between right and center which has enabled the Republicans to remain a competitive national party for generations is dead. Only the most reactionary of politicians can thrive in the Republican party, just as only the radical has any chance of being embraced by the Democrats.

In short, if Gov. Kasich- who managed to win only his home state in the 2016 primaries, with the benefit of a much-divided field- goes head-to-head with the president for the Republican nomination, Mr. Trump will hand him his head. For Kasich to run as a Republican would be a waste of effort, and those Republican donors who are presumably willing, at least under some circumstances, to support such a challenge would be wasting their money under any imaginable scenario.

Not since the Republicans in 1860 has a third party succeeded in electing a president, and not since Theodore Roosevelt's "Bull Moose" party in 1912 has one seriously threatened to do so. The chances of Kasich succeeding at the head of a national unity ticket in 2020 would be long.  But they would not be nearly as long as the chances of any centrist being nominated by either major party in 2020, with or without the added obstacle of seeking to deny renomination to a sitting president.

It's hard to see how Kasich- or Mitt Romney, or Lindsay Graham, or a dozen other Earthlings who remain in the Republican party even in the age of Trump- can possibly have any future there. Perhaps Romney could carve out a career in the Senate. Maybe some other sane Republicans could do the same in specific states where the general appetite for red meat among GOP primary voters isn't as strong as it is elsewhere. But there is virtually no chance for moderate Republicans to have any real impact on the nation's future. The only chance for that would be a new, centrist third party.

Unite America is already running independent candidates for state legislatures, the House, and various governorships this year, and is pursuing an active strategy of electing a number of United States senators to hold the balance of power in the upper chamber of Congress, offering their support to whichever side on contested issues would be willing to be flexible and to seek compromise. According to Gallup, 45% of American voters consider themselves independents as of last month, with 29% identifying as Democrats and 26% as Republicans. Running as an independent, someone like Kasich would have the natural constituency he would lack as a Republican. In fact, it would not be going too far to say that his only chance of making a major impact, much less of winning the presidency, would be to do what he has already hinted at and bolt the Republican party, opting instead to head a ticket offering conciliation rather than polarization, moderation rather than extremism, flexibility as opposed to ideological purity, and common sense as opposed to malice and stubbornness.

There is not simply a historical need for an alternative to the two major parties, but a demand for one. Yes, it's only rarely that a third party even impacted a presidential race even to the extent that George Wallace did in 1968 or John Anderson did in 1980 or Ross Perot did in 1992. It's even rarer that the Whigs replace the Federalists or the Republicans replace the Whigs as one of the two parties from which Americans have traditionally chosen their leaders, or a Lincoln defeat the entrenched political establishment for the presidency. But there is a huge pool of decent, sensible, disgruntled voters who are thoroughly disgusted with the extremists who dominate the Republicans and the Democrats, and who no longer see either party as a viable option.

I personally suspect that the process of polarization has gone too far for either party to be recalled to its traditional sanity. The Democrats will never again be the party of JFK or LBJ or Hubert Humphrey, or likely even of Bill Clinton. The Republicans will never again be the party of Lincoln or TR or Ike or Gerald Ford or even of Ronald Reagan. Our only hope of that- and it's a vanishingly remote one- is the shock of having a third party or at least a ticket which stands for the values that JFK and LBJ and Humphrey and Ford and Reagan held in common at least throw one or both of the major parties into enough of a panic that it remembers itself. More likely, the future of the American center will belong to a new party born of common sense and a recognition for the need for civility and compromise and flexibility and sanity in an age that has lost its mind.

Somebody, I'm convinced, will offer that alternative in 2020. It might be Evan McMullin. It might be Jon Huntsman. It might be some obscure but reasonable Democrat. I doubt that it will be Mitt Romney, although I remain confident that he'll win his race to succeed Orrin Hatch in the U.S. Senate this November. We of the center will not be disenfranchised, as it looked for such a long time like we might be in 2016.

But realistically, other than Romney, only Kasich has the national stature to bear the standard of a centrist campaign with an actual chance of winning, or even of making an impact. The constituency is there. The money is there. Heaven knows the need is there.

I don't know what kind of a future Romney imagines he has in the Republican party.  The refusal of the Utah party to endorse him and instead to force him to face a primary challenge only underscores the point that the GOP belongs lock, stock, and barrel to the extremists. As I've written before, I believe that he had a duty to offer Americans a sane and well-known alternative to Clinton and Trump in 2016. Had he begun the effort in a timely fashion, I think it's even possible that he might have won. Having been the actual Republican nominee in 2012, even now I think that he would be the ideal candidate for America's disenfranchised majority.

But I don't think he understands that it is simply no longer possible for a reasonable person to have an impact in public life, either as a Republican or as a Democrat. Win or lose in the primary (I think he will win and have no doubt that he will win in November), I don't expect Romney to heed the call of history in 2020 any more than he did in 2016.

That leaves Kasich. He has run for president twice before, and in neither case did he do very well. But he is the popular governor or one of our largest states and well enough known that, other than Romney, he is probably the only candidate capable of running an independent or third-party campaign from the center that has any chance of winning, or at least of doing well enough to impact history.

I devoutly hope that he doesn't squander the moment with an ill-considered and hopeless run for the nomination of a party that has lost its mind and will never again regain it, whose rank-and-file are crazy enough to line up the way they have in back of Donald Trump.