In an ordinary election year, we would no longer care about John Kasich’s opinions on the issues of the day. The Ohio governor has only finished first in one primary state—the one where he lives—and has one-fifth as many delegates as the Republican frontrunner (Donald Trump) and one-third as many delegates as the guy in second place (Ted Cruz).

But the Republican establishment is terrified of handing the nomination to the Racist Squinting Man-Pig or Sweaty Fundamentalist Ghoul because polls indicate neither could win the general election. Comparatively, Kasich looks like a guy a blue-collar Democrat might vote for, even though he categorically supports pretty much every bad conservative policy you can name. So Kasich is hanging around until the convention, where he hopes there will materialize some golden road upon which he can drive to the nomination.

Yesterday, Kasich appeared on CBS’ Face the Nation to talk about the upcoming primary in New York. Host John Dickerson asked him about HB 2, the ugly and controversial law North Carolina conservatives foisted upon the state a few weeks ago. Here’s what Kasich said:

“I believe that religious institutions ought to be protected and be able to be in a position of where they can live out their deeply held religious purposes. But when you get beyond that it gets to be a tricky issue. And tricky is not the right word, but it can become a contentious issue.”

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Then: “I wouldn’t have signed that law from everything I know,” Kasich said, adding, “I haven’t studied it.”

Kasich then pivoted into a conservative-friendly spiel about how we write too many laws in this country, which of course is not true at all when it comes to regulating the business interests of the financial elite, which is the actual reason why the economy still doesn’t work for the majority of Americans, but OK, whatever. He closed with this bit:

“Can’t we figure out just how to get along a little bit better and respect one another? I mean, that’s where I think we ought to be. Everybody chill out.”

We agree, John Kasich. We agree.