“The Ultimate Christie Conspiracy”: He’s Really Nice Because Conservatives Secretly Know Mitt Romney Is Winning
As you’ve probably seen, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie — a prominent Republican and Romney endorser — has recently repeatedly praised President Barack Obama for his and the federal government’s response to Hurricane Sandy. Christie has likely done this because … he is grateful and the federal government has been helpful, but the political press needs stuff to write about, so people have written about it as a political act.
Most conservatives are just sort of ignoring this development, as liberals gleefully publicize pictures of the men joining together to inspect the damage along the Jersey Shore and compliment each other for the cameras. But some are weighing in. Here are the conservative explanations for Chris Christie’s recent effusive praise of Barack Obama: The Daily Caller’s Matt Lewis says the force of Christie’s praise is suspect: “The issue here is about the degree to which he is going out of his way to help Obama politically — and the context of the timing.” He thinks this indicates a personal schism between Christie and Romney.
But my favorite explanation comes from genius political analyst Joel Pollack at Big Government, one of the increasingly easily ignorable stable of dumb blogs and lie-generation machines founded by the late Andrew Breitbart.
Here is Pollack’s theory: Christie is praising Obama because Mitt Romney is so far ahead that it doesn’t matter.
But the truth about Christie’s outreach to Obama is blindingly obvious: Mitt Romney is now running away with this election, freeing Christie to praise the president without fear that doing so will tip the scales.
Oh. I see! But … aren’t all the national polls essentially tied? Yes, but you forgot about skewing.
Romney’s lead in the national polls may appear small, but it is likely much more significant, since the electorate that shows up on Tuesday will include proportionally fewer Democrats than most polls have assumed thus far.
Oh. I see! (There aren’t any links to anything in that paragraph btw.)
Democrats and journalists have clung desperately to one illusion after another–first, that Obama was winning in Ohio, until that was no longer true; next, that Obama had an edge in early voting, until that was wrong; and finally, that Obama had a stronger ground game, until that began to fall apart.
Now that Obama is on defense in blue states such as Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Oregon and Michigan, a Romney victory is within reach.
Haha sure. OK. The evidence that Obama is losing Ohio is one Rasmussen poll — the only poll showing Romney leading in Ohio, by the way — and the “ground game” link is just a Robert Stacy McCain blog post about how he met an excited Romney canvasser and went to an Americans for Prosperity event.
Also Obama’s visit to New Jersey “merely highlights the fact that he abdicated that leadership on 9/11.”
In conclusion, Chris Christie was really nice to Barack Obama because all conservatives secretly know that when you unskew the polls Mitt Romney is winning in all swing states, the end.
By: Alex Pareene, Salon, October 31, 2012
“The Comeback Skid”: Chris Christie’s “Jersey Comeback” Is Playing The Same Paul Ryan Game
There will be two big stars at the Republican National Convention, and neither of them will be Mitt Romney. One will, of course, be Paul Ryan, Mr. Romney’s running mate. The other will be Chris Christie, the governor of New Jersey, who will give the keynote address. And while the two men could hardly look or sound more different, they are brothers under the skin.
How so? Both have carefully cultivated public images as tough, fiscally responsible guys willing to make hard choices. And both public images are completely false.
I’ve written a lot lately deconstructing the Ryan myth, so let me turn today to Mr. Christie.
When Mr. Christie took office in January 2010, New Jersey — like many other states — was in dire fiscal straits thanks to the effects of a depressed economy. Unlike the federal government, states are required by their constitutions to run more or less balanced budgets every year (although there is room for accounting gimmicks), so like other governors, Mr. Christie was forced to engage in belt-tightening.
So far so normal: while Mr. Christie has made a lot of noise about his tough budget choices, other governors have done much the same. Nor has he eschewed budget gimmicks: like earlier New Jersey governors, Mr. Christie has closed budget gaps in part by deferring required contributions to state pension funds, which is in effect a form of borrowing against the future, and he has also sought to paper over budget gaps by diverting money from places like the Transportation Trust Fund.
If there is a distinctive feature to New Jersey’s belt-tightening under Mr. Christie, it is its curiously selective nature. The governor was willing to cancel the desperately needed project to build another rail tunnel linking the state to Manhattan, but has invested state funds in a megamall in the Meadowlands and a casino in Atlantic City.
Also, while much of his program involves spending cuts, he has effectively raised taxes on low-income workers and homeowners by slashing tax credits. But he vetoed a temporary surcharge on millionaires while refusing to raise the state’s gasoline tax, which is the third-lowest in America and far below tax rates in neighboring states. Only some people, it seems, are expected to make sacrifices.
But as I said, Mr. Christie talks a good (and very loud) game about his willingness to make tough choices, making big claims about spending cuts — claims, by the way, that PolitiFact has unequivocally declared false. And for the past year he has been touting what he claims is the result of those tough choices: the “Jersey comeback,” the supposed recovery of his state’s economy.
Strange to say, however, Mr. Christie has told reporters that he won’t use the term “Jersey comeback” in his keynote address. And it’s not hard to see why: the comeback, such as it was, has hit the skids. Indeed, the latest figures show his state with the fourth-highest unemployment rate in the nation. Strikingly, New Jersey’s 9.8 percent unemployment rate is now significantly higher than the unemployment rate in long-suffering Michigan, which has had a true comeback thanks to the G.O.P.-opposed auto bailout.
Now, state governors don’t actually have much impact on short-run economic performance, so the skidding New Jersey economy isn’t really Mr. Christie’s fault. Still, he was the one who chose to make it an issue. And even more important, he’s still pushing the policies the state’s recovery was supposed to justify.
You see, all that boasting about the Jersey comeback wasn’t just big talk (although it was that, too). It was, instead, supposed to demonstrate that good times were back, revenue was on the upswing, and it was now time for what Mr. Christie really wants: a major cut in income taxes.
Even if the comeback were real, this would be a highly dubious idea. By all accounts, New Jersey still has a significant structural deficit, that is, a deficit that will persist even when the economy recovers. Furthermore, the Christie tax-cut proposal would do very little for the middle class but give large breaks to the wealthy.
But in any case, the good times are by no means back, and neither is the revenue boom that was supposed to justify a tax cut. So has the very responsible Mr. Christie accepted the idea of at least delaying his tax-cut plan until the promised revenue gains materialize? Of course not.
Which brings me back to the comparison with Paul Ryan. Mr. Ryan, as people finally seem to be realizing, is at heart a fiscal fraud, boasting about his commitment to deficit reduction but actually placing a much higher priority on tax cuts for the wealthy. Mr. Christie may have a different personal style, but he’s playing the same game.
In other words, meet the new boaster, same as the old boaster. And pray that we won’t get fooled again.
By: Paul Krugman, Op-Ed Columnist, The New York Times, August 26, 2012
“Lest Ye Be Judged”: Romney Silent On Trump, But Demanded Repudiation Of Pastor Who Called Mormonism A Cult
Mitt Romney refused to directly repudiate Donald Trump’s claims that President Obama was born in Kenya just hours before he is scheduled to appear with the reality T.V. star for a fund raiser in Las Vegas, NV. “A candidate can’t be responsiblefor everything that their supporters say,” Romney spokesperson Eric Fehrnstrom told CNN on Friday, before insisting that the former Massachusetts governor “accepts the fact that [Obama] was born in Hawaii.”
But Romney has previously demanded that his political opponents publicly rebuke supporters who make false accusations about Mormonism. In October, Romney aggressively confronted evangelical pastor and Rick Perry backer Robert Jeffress, who claimed that Romney is not Christian and is part of a Mormon cult. Romney called on Perry to denounce Jeffress:
“Gov. Perry selected an individual to introduce him who then used religion as a basis for which he said he would endorse Gov. Perry and a reason to not support me. Gov. Perry then said that introduction just hit it out of the park,” Romney said.
“I just don’t believe that that kind of divisiveness based upon religion has a place in this country. I believe in the spirit of the founders, when they suggested in crafting this country that we would be a nation that tolerated other people, different faiths — that we’d be a place of religious diversity,” Romney continued.
He concluded, “I would call upon Gov. Perry to repudiate the sentiment and the remarks made by that pastor.”
Ironically, Perry spokesman Mark Miner responded to Romney’s outrage with the same sentiment that Romney is now expressing towards those who have called on him to directly repudiate Trump. “The governor does not agree with every single issue of people that endorsed him or people that he meets,” Miner said. “This political rhetoric from Gov. Romney isn’t going to create one new job or help the economy. He’s playing a game of deflection and the people of this country know this.”
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) — a Romney surrogate and potential Vice Presidential nominee — also condemned Perry, saying, that any candidate that would associate with such comments “is beneath the office of president of the United States.”
By: Igor Volsky, Think Progress, May 29, 2012
“Big Fiscal Phonies”: Republicans Are Fake Deficit Hawks With “Magic Asterisk” Solutions
Quick quiz: What’s a good five-letter description of Chris Christie, the Republican governor of New Jersey, that ends in “y”?
The obvious choice is, of course, “bully.” But as a recent debate over the state’s budget reveals, “phony” is an equally valid answer. And as Mr. Christie goes, so goes his party.
Until now the attack of the fiscal phonies has been mainly a national rather than a state issue, with Paul Ryan, the chairman of the House Budget Committee, as the prime example. As regular readers of this column know, Mr. Ryan has somehow acquired a reputation as a stern fiscal hawk despite offering budget proposals that, far from being focused on deficit reduction, are mainly about cutting taxes for the rich while slashing aid to the poor and unlucky. In fact, once you strip out Mr. Ryan’s “magic asterisks” — claims that he will somehow increase revenues and cut spending in ways that he refuses to specify — what you’re left with are plans that would increase, not reduce, federal debt.
The same can be said of Mitt Romney, who claims that he will balance the budget but whose actual proposals consist mainly of huge tax cuts (for corporations and the wealthy, of course) plus a promise not to cut defense spending.
Both Mr. Ryan and Mr. Romney, then, are fake deficit hawks. And the evidence for their fakery isn’t just their bad arithmetic; it’s the fact that for all their alleged deep concern over budget gaps, that concern isn’t sufficient to induce them to give up anything — anything at all — that they and their financial backers want. They’re willing to snatch food from the mouths of babes (literally, via cuts in crucial nutritional aid programs), but that’s a positive from their point of view — the social safety net, says Mr. Ryan, should not become “a hammock that lulls able-bodied people to lives of dependency and complacency.” Maintaining low taxes on profits and capital gains, and indeed cutting those taxes further, are, however, sacrosanct.
Still, Mr. Ryan and Mr. Romney are playing to a national audience. Are Republican governors, who have to deal with real budget constraints, different? Well, there have been many claims to that effect; Mr. Christie, in particular, has been widely held up, not least by himself, as an example of a politician willing to make tough choices.
But last week we got to see him facing an actual tough choice — and aside from the yelling-at-people thing, he proved himself just another standard fiscal phony.
Here’s the story: For some time now Mr. Christie has been touting what he calls the “Jersey comeback.” Even before his latest outburst, it was hard to see what he was talking about: yes, there have been some job gains in the McMansion State since Mr. Christie took office, but they have lagged gains both in the nation as a whole and in New York and Connecticut, the obvious points of comparison.
Yet Mr. Christie has been adamant that New Jersey is on the way back, and that this makes room for, you guessed it, tax cuts that would disproportionately benefit the wealthy.
Last week reality hit: David Rosen, the state’s independent, nonpartisan budget analyst, told legislators that the state faces a $1.3 billion shortfall. How did the governor respond?
First, by attacking the messenger. According to Mr. Christie, Mr. Rosen — a veteran public servant whose office usually makes more accurate budget forecasts than the state’s governor — is “the Dr. Kevorkian of the numbers.” Civility!
By the way, even Mr. Christie’s own officials are predicting a major budget shortfall, just not quite as big. And the two big credit-rating agencies, Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s, have recently issued warnings about New Jersey’s budget situation, which S.& P. called “structurally unbalanced” because of the governor’s optimistic revenue assumptions.
New Jersey, then, is still in dire fiscal shape. So is our tough-talking governor willing to reconsider his pet tax cut? Fuhgeddaboudit. Instead, he wants to fill the hole with one-shot budget gimmicks, including reneging on a promise to reduce borrowing for transportation investment and diverting funds from clean-energy programs. So much for fiscal responsibility.
Will Mr. Christie’s budget temper tantrum end speculation that he might become Mr. Romney’s running mate? I have no idea. But it really doesn’t matter: whoever Mr. Romney picks, he or she will cheerfully go along with the budget-busting, reverse Robin Hood policies that you know are coming if the former governor wins.
For the modern American right doesn’t care about deficits, and never did. All that talk about debt was just an excuse for attacking Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and food stamps. And as for Mr. Christie, well, he’s just another fiscal phony, distinguished only by his fondness for invective.
By: Paul Krugman, Op-Ed Columnist, The New York Times, May 27, 2012
“Unappealing Candidates”: Sorry, Republicans, Your Savior Won’t Come
In Politico’s Playbook on Saturday Mike Allen reported that elite Republicans are still fantasizing about a superhero who will swoop in to free them from the limitations of their current crop of contenders [the all-capitalized phrases are Allen’s]:
A tippy-top Republican, unprompted, yesterday sketched the germ of a plan for a new candidate if Rick Santorum upsets Mitt Romney in the Michigan primary on Feb. 28. Our friend brought visual aids: chicken-scratched versions of prosaic documents that are circulating among GOP insiders like nuclear-code sheets…. The point: even after Feb. 28, it might be possible to assemble a Hail Mary candidacy that could garner enough delegates to force a CONTESTED convention….
At that very moment, ABC’S Jonathan Karl was at the Capitol, having a conversation that resulted in this Richter-rattler: “A prominent Republican senator just told me that if Romney can’t win in Michigan, the Republican Party needs to go back to the drawing board and convince somebody new to get into the race. ‘If Romney cannot win Michigan, we need a new candidate,’ said the senator…. “Santorum? ‘He’d lose 35 states,’ the senator said, predicting the same fate for Newt Gingrich. It would have to be somebody else, the senator said. Who? ‘Jeb Bush.’ ”
This is silly because no candidate exists who would be simultaneously more acceptable to the Republican base and independents than both Romney and Santorum. And if he did, he’d be a fool to sign on for this unpleasant adventure.
The candidates whose names are being tossed out as options—Mitch Daniels, Chris Christie, Jeb Bush—have plenty of potential liabilities. Daniels has been fined for drug possession. His marital history is complicated, although at least on the surface it’s much more sympathetic than, say, Newt Gingrich’s. He also was director of the Office of Management and Budget back when George W. Bush was running up the budget deficit, something Republicans claim to have been upset by at the time, although we know they are lying. Perhaps, like having supported an individual mandate in healthcare reform, it could become an ex post facto disqualification.
Chris Christie, who has already endorsed Romney, has taken a stance against Islamophobia, a position that offends many conservatives. Meanwhile, his angry, abrasive shtick might play badly among soccer mom swing voters.
Jeb Bush is the brother of former President George W. Bush. I don’t think that point requires further illumination.
And what would be their incentive for getting in the race? To have their histories pored over, to spend days raising money and rushing to put together a campaign only to risk embarrassment? Since it’s no longer possible for a new entrant to win the nomination outright, the reward would merely be winning enough delegates to force a fight at the convention. If these candidates couldn’t be persuaded to accept the hassles of a Republican primary when it was winnable, why would any of them do so now?
Republicans should come to grips with the fact that the nominee is going to be one of the remaining, unappealing candidates.
By: Ben Adler, The Nation, February 20, 2012
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