John Kasich: GOP debates are "the dumbest thing going"
Ohio Gov. John Kasich on Wednesday night blasted the Republican debates as "the dumbest thing going," saying they're a poor way for voters to actually get a sense of the candidates on stage.
"It's sort of like, explain your entire life story in 30 seconds," he told Stephen Colbert on "The Late Show." "I mean, Harry Truman couldn't get elected this way. The thing I love are the town halls."
Kasich added that debates are all "sound bites," asking how the country can elect someone based on 30-second tidbits--"particularly if the sound bite is designed to attack someone else," he said.
"If I can't win by being fundamentally positive, what's the point of winning?" he asked.
Addressing his second-place finish in New Hampshire and why it's so important, Kasich said it's given his campaign a jolt of momentum heading into the next states on the map.
"What happened is, New Hampshire is a place where you can kind of get on a rocket ship and become known," he said, noting that the last time he appeared on Colbert's show "not a person had a clue who I was."
Here's the clip of his "Late Show" appearance:
The Ohio governor also repeated his previous comments about a replacement for the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, calling for a nominee to be confirmed next year after a new president is inaugurated.
"It's an opportunity for people to number one vote for president, but also have a say in who's going to be on the Supreme Court," he said of the November presidential vote. (Colbert responded by noting that voters did vote for a president back in 2012, and that they chose Obama.)
If President Obama does nominate a replacement this year as he's expected to do, Kasich said, it should be someone about whom there's an "overwhelming consensus."
"I don't mean unanimous. I'm talking about somebody where the overwhelming consensus says that's the person we want," he said. "And that isn't going to happen now."