Back when Ohio Governor John Kasich first announced his presidential bid I asked a number of questions regarding his candidacy. While understanding that he likely had a greater chance of carrying Ohio – still important – there seemed to be two big arguments against him. First, he didn’t seem to be taking up a very different lane than some of the other establishment candidates in the race who also had gubernatorial experience and fairly standard, mainstream party positions. Second, he had obvious hits on his track record, including a budget which raised taxes on tobacco and energy as well as increasing the sales tax. His move to expand Medicaid didn’t do much for his prospects, either.

Still, Kasich surprised me, raising a significant amount of cash and rising up in the polls in some early states. But if the latest news on the survey front represents any sort of a trend, the boomlet may be turning into a bustlet. (Cleveland.com)

The rise of anti-establishment candidates and Marco Rubio – and the re-emergence of Jeb Bush – have stalled Ohio Gov. John Kasich’s momentum in New Hampshire, a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Marist poll shows.

Kasich, who a month ago sat in second place, behind real estate mogul Donald Trump, does not rank among the Republican presidential field’s top 5 this time.

Trump leads at 21 percent, followed by former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina at 16 percent, Bush at 11 percent and Rubio and Dr. Ben Carson tied at 10 percent.

Adding insult to injury, Kasich is now trailing even Chris Christie in the Granite State. It might be easy to write this off as “just one poll in just one state” but Governor Kasich has pretty much been putting all of his eggs in that basket since day one. And he admits as much.

Kasich’s earlier rise in the state was attributed in part to the money his allies at two independent expenditure groups have invested in TV ads promoting the governor. He has made New Hampshire his top priority, visiting 15 times already this year.

“We do well here, we’re moving on. We do terrible here, it’s over,” Kasich said Friday at the opening of his New Hampshire campaign headquarters, according to a report from the Boston Globe. “No confusion about that. This is very, very important to us.”

The Kasich team has reason to be focused on New Hampshire. He’s currently running at 3% nationally, with 2.5% in Iowa and 4% in South Carolina. If he had any hope of a big breakthrough when the votes start getting cast it was surely New Hampshire. I mean, those numbers are better than Bobby Jindal’s, but they’re uniformly within the margin of error compared to what Rick Perry had when he dropped.

Kasich has enough money in the bank to hang around for a while and he can absolutely stick to the theory that “it’s still early” and a lot can change between now and February. Also, as more people drop out (assuming he’s not one of them) their supporters have to go somewhere, so why not switch over to Kasich? All that is true… in theory. But that doesn’t mean that it’s likely. I’ll wager at this point that he’ll stick around for the next debate, but if he doesn’t “re-boom” after that we may not have John Kasich to kick around anymore by the time Thanksgiving rolls around.