Gov. John Kasich catches Scott Walker in Lie, schools him on Common Core and Medicaid Expansion.

Ohio Governor John Kasich shut Scott Walker down. 

As it turns out, Kasich is not a dictatorial authoritarian like Scott Walker, Rick Perry or Bobby Jindal, who all looked decidedly fringe with their positions on immigration, Common Core and ObamaCare.  

Kasich was always a very partisan congressman, who later as governor, angered Ohioans with dramatic changes to collective bargaining like Scott Walker. But after reading the following debate and take-down by Kasich of Walker, it's a relief to see at least one adult in the room learned a big lesson from the resulting public protests.

Even better, Kasich caught Scott Walker making things ups again, this time about Bill Clinton's relationship with congress. Oops, Kasich was there, and that kicked off this amazing back-and-forth that's worth reading. Yahoo News: 

The Republican governor of Ohio John Kasich and Wisconsin Scott Walker were seated onstage at the opening plenary session of the Republican Governors Association annual conference. Call it a dry run for the primary debates. Kasich, a wily 62-year-old former congressman, demonstratively disputed Walker’s retelling of political history.

Walker, the 47-year-old conservative star, was arguing that President Barack Obama is more hostile toward congressional Republicans than President Bill Clinton was during the '90s, teeing up a critique of Obama’s plans to issue an executive order on immigration this week. Walker said, “Clinton did not say the Republicans in Congress aren't going to work with me so I’m going to do an executive order. He sat down with them.”

Here's where Walker got schooled by Kasich, a congressman at the time:

Kasich snapped almost matter-of-factly. “No, he shut the government — the government got shut down first.” And then the two men began to talk over each other.

“There was tremendous animosity,” Kasich said, almost yelling, to remind the younger Walker that he, Kasich, had been there himself as a member of Congress.

“It wasn’t —” Walker tried to get out before Kasich cut him off.

“Scott, it was!” Kasich said. “I’ll tell you, when you’re sitting around and we’ve got Newt Gingrich and Bob Dole at each other over a shutdown, it wasn’t easy either. My only point is, I don’t like what [Obama’s] doing, but what I will say: This is emblematic of where we’re going forward as a country. I mean, are we going to deal with the real problems of health care, the real problem of immigration, the real problem of a divided country? If we had not got the Clinton people to the table to negotiate … we would never have balanced the budget. Nothing gets fixed without some bipartisan support. You can’t do it without bipartisan support.”

Kasich had suckered Walker into a discussion: 

“You gotta be careful with the rhetoric, because you get too far out on that and people don’t want to deal.” On granting citizenship to undocumented immigrants: “I am not closed to it. You know why? Everybody in this country needs to feel like they have an opportunity.”

On Common Core educational standards: 

“We’re not doing well in the world. If we’re not careful the Googles and PayPals will be invented somewhere else. … I do think we have to have good standards. I don’t see that this is Obamacore. … The idea that kids in Iowa, kids in California, kids in Ohio, there ought to be a higher level of achievement? I’m completely for that. I think it makes sense. … It is purely local control.”

On expanding Medicaid in Ohio: 

“Ronald Reagan expanded Medicaid, OK? Because he said there were people that were left out. We have seen stabilizing of people in our emergency rooms. Do you understand that when people can’t get comprehensive health care they get sicker and end up in the emergency room, and guess who pays for it? We do.”