“But I Only Moved The Cones!”: Chris Christie May Pay A Big Toll For The Bridgegate Scandal
Texas populist politician Jim Hightower is noted for the saying, “There’s nothing in the middle of the road but yellow stripes and dead armadillos.”
That’s not the case in New Jersey. Here the middle of the road is often occupied by a toll booth. And nothing could be a more fitting symbol of the crisis that seems to be ending our governor’s national ambitions.
As of last month, the toll on the George Washington Bridge rose to $13 for rush-hour traffic. It was a mere $8 when Christie took office. Consider that in light of Christie’s claim, repeated in his State of the State address last week, that he has never raised taxes.
That claim rests on the assumption that those tolls are “user fees,” not taxes. In fact, only a small percentage of the toll money goes to maintaining the bridge. The rest is raked off for so many pet projects that the Port Authority might better be named the “Pork Authority.”
Without all the extra swag from those and other tolls — and a lot of creative bonding — Christie could never have kept that no-tax-hike pledge that would have served him so well in the race for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination.
I say “would have” because after last week the odds of such a run are no longer in Christie’s favor. The hearing room was crammed with cameras as the Assembly Select Committee on Investigations held its first session Thursday. Afterward, Chairman John Wisniewski (D-Middlesex) announced that 17 people would receive subpoenas. Among them were a host of key Christie aides who should have plenty to say both about the closure of those bridge lanes and the motive, which was political vengeance.
Christie’s political future rests on his claim that, over the four months the scandal unfolded, he had no idea the “traffic safety survey” behind the closure was a sham.
That claim brought comparisons to the Sergeant Schultz character from the old TV comedy “Hogan’s Heroes.” One wag even posted a picture of Christie’s face inserted under the World War II German helmet of the prison camp guard whose biggest laugh line was “I know nothing! I see nothing!”
They say a great man can survive anything but ridicule. We’ll see if that’s true in the coming weeks as those hearings reveal just what Christie knew and when he knew it.
The results will likely clear some traffic from the middle of the road in the 2016 race. Christie’s claim to fame was electability and he had quite a claim until Bridgegate. Christie’s appeal was based not on his ideology but his popularity. After that 22-point landslide re-election win, he could make a plausible claim that he could break the Democrats’ stranglehold on at least one blue state, his own, and perhaps others.
The rest of the middle-of-the-road candidates look ready to repeat Mitt Romney’s performance in 2012, when 40 states were not seriously contested and the election was decided by 10 swing states that swung Democratic.
So that’s not good news for the GOP. Christie was the one candidate who might have brought about a realignment. Virtually everything he did over the past few years was designed to make that case, from endorsing New Jersey’s version of the Dream Act giving in-state tuition rates to undocumented students to reaching out to minorities and urban mayors.
It looks like his campaign reached a bit too far when seeking the endorsement of at least one mayor. Last month, Christie was running just three points behind Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton in an NBC News/Marist poll of potential candidates in the 2016 presidential race. By last week, that poll had Christie trailing Clinton by 13 points. So it looks like this moderate Republican governor may not be going anywhere.
This points out a key problem not just with Christie but with moderates in general. Their moderation is often a cover for an approach to politics that focuses more on doing well than doing good. Over the coming weeks, we can expect to learn a bit about the politically connected lawyers and developers who enriched themselves while wheeling and dealing behind the scenes at the Port Authority.
The mainstream media may not think much of extremists. And they certainly have their flaws, whether they’re leftists or rightists. But as Hightower noted, there’s a reason the voters often prefer them. Sometimes a little bit of idealism can get you a long way down the road.
ON THE OTHER HAND, insightful reporter Matt Katz takes the position that Christie may survive this scandal with his national ambitions intact:
Consider that most of his potential presidential opponents have avoided slamming him on the controversy. Or that a New Hampshire poll released Thursday showed him leading all Republican comers — by a larger margin than in September. Most of those questioned had heard of Bridgegate, and 14 percent of GOP voters said it made them like him more.Yes, Christie was scorned in a (hilarious) “Born to Run” parody by Bruce Springsteen and Jimmy Fallon. But there could be worse things for a Republican with base troubles than to get raked through the coals by the media elite.
Christie’s political advisers say interest was high for fundraisers he’s hosting this weekend in Florida, and national donors are calling to express support. The road to 2016 may now have some more traffic on it, but if Christie’s name doesn’t make a damning appearance in a subpoenaed Bridgegate document, he will have the cash and connections to mount a strong bid for the presidency.
Katz was the guy who asked the question at that Dec. 2 press conference that elicited the “I moved the cones” wisecrack from Christie. That remark will certainly come back to haunt Christie. And unless the governor can explain why he still believed that “traffic study” was legit, he won’t be putting this scandal behind him.
By: Paul Mulshine, The Star Ledger, New Jersey, January 18, 2014
“The Anti-Establishment Establishment”: In The GOP, The “Kids” Have Stopped Listening And The “Adults” Are No Longer In Control
To those of us who are perpetually skeptical of the alleged power of the incredibly “adult” and deeply “responsible” Republican Establishment to keep the “constitutional conservatives” in line, a Timothy Carney piece in the Washington Examiner earlier this week was especially interesting. It argued that the ability of said Establishment to kick ass and take names in Congress was being sharply eroded by the loss of a monopoly over money and jobs in Washington:
Cold cash, together with control of institutions, is what makes the Establishment the Establishment. But in the current Republican civil war, the insurgents have secured their own money pipelines, and they control their own institutions – which means the GOP leadership and its allies in the business lobby have a hard fight in front of them.
The firing and hiring of conservative staffer Paul Teller makes it clear that the anti-establishment has built its own establishment.
Teller was a House staffer for more than a decade, and was longtime executive director of the conservative Republican Study Committee. The RSC always exerted a rightward pull on party leadership, but it is nonetheless a subsidiary of the party.
After the 2012 election, the Republican Establishment captured the RSC, in effect, by getting Congressman Steve Scalise elected chairman. Scalise is a conservative, but he is also a close ally of the party leadership – much more so than his predecessors Jim Jordan and Tom Price. Scalise immediately swept out most of the RSC staff.
Last month, Teller was accused of working with outside groups such as Heritage Action to whip RSC members – and Scalise showed Teller the door.
In the old days, this might have been a disaster for Teller. He had lost his job and landed on the wrong side of the party leadership. Anyone who picked up Teller would be spitting in the eye of the Establishment. But this week, Sen. Ted Cruz announced he had hired Teller as deputy chief of staff.
Carney goes on to discuss the rapid rise of alternative sources for campaign money like the Club for Growth and Super-PACs, and the conquest of one important Beltway institution, the Heritage Foundation, by people openly hostile to The Establishment.
Now when you add in the already virtually complete control by hard-core conservatives of basic formulations of GOP ideology and messaging (the best example remains Jim DeMint’s Cut, Cap and Balance Pledge, an insanely radical piece of fiscal flimflammery that a long line of Republicans, from Mitt Romney on down, lined up to sign in 2011 and 2012) and the disproportionate strength of conservative activists in the presidential nominating process, it’s increasingly clear the “adults” are not necessarily in control. Indeed, like parents who try to behave like a kid to maintain some influence with their kids, Establishment folk are forever conceding territory to the “activists” they privately call crazy people. And the loss of its monopoly over jobs and money is like a parent’s loss of a teenager’s car keys and allowance. At some point, “the kids” just stop listening.
By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Washington Monthly Political Animal, January 16, 2014
“There Are Definitely People Jumping Ship”: The Republican Party Poobahs Are On The Brink Of Panic
Gov. Chris Christie (R) is scheduled to attend some political events in Florida over the weekend, where he’ll connect with Gov. Rick Scott (R). (The two will not appear in public with one another, raising questions as to which one might be more embarrassed by the other.)
The New Jersey governor will not necessarily receive a warm welcome from every Republican in the Sunshine State. Brian Ballard, Mitt Romney’s Florida finance chairman in 2012 and a major Rick Scott fundraiser, told the Wall Street Journal he sees Christie as a “colossal ego” and a “maniacal bully,” traits he said would make Christie “too dangerous to be our nominee.”
And in response, the governor’s aides sent theWall Street Journal a 5,600-word collection of positive remarks from Republicans and conservative commentators – evidence, a spokesman said, “of an outpouring of support across the country.”
So, who’s right? Is Brian Ballard’s criticism an aberration against the backdrop of a party that broadly supports Christie or are those negative sentiments more widely held? McKay Coppins has an interesting report suggesting, at a minimum, GOP trepidation. Indeed, Coppins talked with “a dozen party officials, fundraisers, and strategists,” and found “party poobahs … on the brink of panic.”
“My sense is they’re hoping against hope there aren’t more shoes to drop,” said Keith Appell, a Republican strategist with ties to the tea party who has been critical of Christie’s moderate streak. “They really want to support him … but they can’t control anything if another shoe drops.”
A Republican operative at a large super PAC used the same metaphor – a favorite among political observers at the moment – to describe the unease in the party.
“Everyone thinks there’s probably a 60% chance the other shoe will drop,” said the operative, who like many of the people quoted in this story, requested anonymity to speak freely about a situation that is still evolving. “When I saw the press conference, I said, I don’t think he’s lying… But for the deputy chief of staff to do something like that requires a culture in the office that he would have set, and it probably requires other examples that would have made her feel like that was acceptable to do.” He added, “My gut is that they’ll probably find something else.”
Coppins talked to one Republican fundraising operative who has met with Christie who said of donors, “There are definitely people jumping ship.”
This afternoon’s news probably won’t help matters.
Because today, some subpoenas landed in some interesting hands.
The state Assembly committee investigating the George Washington Bridge scandal released a partial list of names of the 17 high-level Port Authority and Christie administration officials who received subpoenas within the last 24 hours.
The subpoenas request documents concerning: “All aspects of the finances, operations and management of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey , including but not limited to, the reassignment of access lanes in Fort Lee, N.J. to the George Washington Bridge, and any other matter raising concerns about of abuse of power.”
Among those subpoenaed? The Office of the Governor, in addition to Christie’s spokesperson, communications director, incoming chief of staff, and former chief of staff (who now also happens to be the governor’s nominee for state attorney general).
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, January 17, 2014
“The Modern Republican Party”: House Conservatives Fed Up With Conservative Caucus, Form Even More Conservative Caucus
The National Journal reports that a few liberty-loving Republican members of Congress, led by Rep. Justin Amash, have started a little caucus to represent the true, “hard-core” alternative to the Republican Study Committee. The idea that anyone needs a more “hardcore” Republican Study Committee seems to require some explaining. The RSC is (and has been for decades) effectively the House of Representatives’ “conservative caucus,” the group you join to announce that you are officially not a RINO. It is also a sort of miniature right-wing think tank with extensive ties to the business and other interests that fund the right and keep Republicans in line. For years, it has produced alternative budgets and decried compromise and criticized leadership for being insufficiently dedicated to small government.
It has, it turns out, been too successful. The RSC’s membership has increased rapidly as it became necessary for most House Republicans to signal their allegiance to ultra-conservatism; it now counts more than 170 members, including the most extreme members in the House, like Louie Gohmert, Michele Bachmann and Paul Broun, but also many more who rarely make headlines. There have been attempts to replace the RSC with something even more conservative in the past, but most of them — like Michele Bachmann’s pathetic “Tea Party Caucus” — were more about an individual lawmaker’s play for press than about creating an alternative organization.
The problem is, the RSC, by any measure, won the battle for the House Republican caucus long ago. More than three-quarters of the GOP conference are now members, including everyone in leadership besides Boehner and Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy. Its primary “rival,” the “moderate” Republican Main Street Partnership, currently has fewer than 50 members in the House.
This criticism is nothing new. Many RSC members, including some former chairmen, have long expressed concerns about its membership—which now stands at 179 of 233 House Republicans. If three-quarters of the GOP Conference belongs to the RSC, they argue, the group cannot possibly practice the ideological purity on which its reputation was established.
“The RSC today covers a fairly broad philosophical swath of the party. It’s no longer just the hard-core right-wingers,” [South Carolina Rep.. Mick] Mulvaney said, adding: “If you want to pay dues, you can get in.”
What Mulvaney doesn’t seem to understand is that the RSC is still “just the hard-core right-wingers,” it’s just that now the vast majority of the Republican conference is “the hard-core right-wingers.” When everyone is a true conservative, then, how do you distinguish yourself as a true conservative? Easy! You just stake out a new position to the right of the right-wing majority. Hence, Amash’s “House Liberty Caucus,” which has a Rand Paul-ish name and a (somewhat fluid) membership of “core” House conservatives, like Mulvaney, Rep. Raul Labrador and Rep. Jim Jordon.
So, while Amash and others insist that the Liberty Caucus is a complement, not a competitor to the RSC, the National Journal says that “several RSC members are considering leaving the group altogether next year and pouring their energy into growing the Liberty Caucus.” In other words, a few years from now, don’t be hugely surprised if the far-right RSC is the “mainstream” House Republican caucus to the “conservative” Liberty Caucus, all without any Republican having moved even slightly toward “the center.” (Either that or this Liberty Caucus will flame out after failing to repeal Obamacare by 2016 or whatever.)
This is the entire story of the modern Republican Party, writ small: ratcheting ever rightward.
By: Alex Pareene, Salon, January 18, 2014
“Freedom’s Just Another Word For Guns”: Honor Lincoln And MLK By Getting Yourself An AR-15
Let’s say you’re a local Republican party organization in a Democratic state, and you want to think creatively about how to get media attention. You could put up a “Kiss a Capitalist” booth at the county fair, or hire a local graffiti artist to spray-paint portraits of Ronald Reagan on the homes of poor people in order to inspire them to take a firm hold of those bootstraps and pull. Or, in honor of Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King, two liberals who got assassinated with guns, you could raffle off an AR-15. That’s what the Multnomah county GOP is doing, and you have to give them credit: people are noticing! Here’s part of their press release:
Multnomah County Republicans recognize the incredible time of year we are in. In successive months to start the year, we celebrate the legacy of two great Republicans who demonstrated leadership and courage that all of us still lean on today: Martin Luther King, Jr. and Abraham Lincoln. In celebrating these two men, and the denial of the rights they fought so hard against, the Multnomah County Republican Party announces that we have started our third raffle for an AR-15 rifle (or handgun of the winner’s choice).
For the record, Martin Luther King was not a Republican, and Abraham Lincoln’s Republican party was the liberal party of its day; just ask yourself what side the average Tea Party Republican of today would have been on had they been alive in 1864. And let’s try to unpack that last sentence: “In celebrating these two men, and the denial of the rights they fought so hard against…” So wait, are you celebrating the denial of rights? And which rights did they fight against? I’m confused.
Grammatical puzzlers aside, this is some high-grade, industrial-strength trolling. For some people, freedom’s just another word for … guns. That’s really all it’s a word for. Freedom is guns, and guns is freedom, and if a historical figure sought to correct injustice, then obviously he would have been opposed to the worst injustice of all, which is when you have three AR-15s and you want to get a fourth one, but you have to get a background check to get it instead of just buying it out of some dude’s trunk at three in the morning in the parking lot of the Piggly Wiggly like James Madison intended.
And here’s the best part of that article about the raffle: “The winner will be given a background check before receiving the weapon.” Wouldn’t want any nuts getting their hands on it.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, January 15, 2014
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