“Chris Christie’s Hypocritical Transformation”: Hypocrisy Is Very Political And The Antithesis Of His Waning Brand Strength
Revisionism, which takes at least a generation in the study of history, is much more rapid in politics. It’s fast, sometimes in the same news cycle. Consider New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. His bridge follies were considered his comeuppance, justice for his arrogance and a sign that his team lacked the experience necessary for his stature as the Republican candidate for president. In other words, overnight Christie transformed from post-partisan icon to typical Jersey pol. But that story-line was just settling in when a new one has emerged: Christie’s troubles with the bridge are not (insert traffic metaphor here) a detour in his political rise, but rather an opportunity to burnish his suspect conservative credentials.
Chris Cillizza and Roger Simon argue that Christie is cleverly using the scandal to show conservatives he is firmly in their camp. Christie’s approach, according to these observers: attack the “liberal media” (in this case, MSNBC) and point out that he is a victim of a partisan witch hunt. While it is certainly a familiar conservative tactic, it won’t work. Chris Christie’s brand, before it hit (insert traffic metaphor here) a speed bump was about being a different kind of Republican. Yes, that may have made his road to the nomination rocky, but he need only look at Mitt Romney to see what happens when a moderate tries to reinvent himself as an arch-conservative to kow-tow to the Republican right. Indeed, not only was Christie smart not to reinvent himself, he realized that being a post-partisan figure was the key to his success. He wanted to be seen as someone who put the job before politics, who could work with others, who was practical. Not only would this image help him in the general election, where he would be seen as a different kind of Republican, but it could even help in the primaries where he would get credit for standing for his beliefs. Moreover, the fundraising base in the Republican Party, at least the less ideological part of it, knows it can’t nominate a right-wing candidate and/or a lightweight. Candidates such as Ted Cruz and Rick Santorum are too extreme; Marco Rubio, too light; and Rand Paul, a little too out-there. Thus, Christie’s front-runner status. Cross-over appeal is the heart of Christie’s allure. This explains why Christie, unlike most Republicans, appeared regularly on MSNBC, the network his office now decries. Whoops! Hypocrisy is very political and the antithesis of Christie’s waning brand strength.
By: Carter Eskew, Post partisan, The Washington Post, January 22, 2014
“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
“No One Was Audited At Bridgegate”: The Classic Conservative Right Wing “So’s Your Old Man” Argument
You know the worst sign for Chris Christie about Bridgegate? The line most of his conservative defenders (and not all conservatives are defending him) are taking isn’t really about the scandal at all. Here’s John Podhoretz at the New York Post:
Most government scandals involve the manipulation of the system in obscure ways by people no one has ever heard of. That is why George Washington Bridgegate is nearly a perfect scandal — because it is comprehensible and (as they say in Hollywood) “relatable” to everyone who has ever been in a car. This is the reason this one is not going to go away so easily, even if one accepts the contention that Gov. Chris Christie had nothing whatsoever to do with it….
And yet, you know what is also something everybody would find “relatable”? Politicians who sic the tax man on others for political gain. Everybody has to deal with the IRS and fears it. Last year, we learned from the Internal Revenue Service itself that it had targeted ideological opponents of the president for special scrutiny and investigation — because they were ideological opponents.
That’s juicy, just as Bridgegate is juicy. It’s something we can all understand, it speaks to our greatest fears, and it’s the sort of thing TV newspeople could gab about for days on end without needing a fresh piece of news to keep it going.
And yet, according to Scott Whitlock of the Media Research Center, “In less than 24 hours, the three networks have devoted 17 times more coverage to a traffic scandal involving Chris Christie than they’ve allowed in the last six months to Barack Obama’s Internal Revenue Service controversy.”
Why? Oh, come on, you know why. Christie belongs to one political party. Obama belongs to the other. You know which ones they belong to. And you know which ones the people at the three networks belong to, too: In surveys going back decades, anywhere from 80% to 90% of Washington’s journalists say they vote Democratic.
In debates from schoolyards to the presidential campaign trail, this is what used to be called a “so’s your old man” argument. It’s not a defense at all, but rather a counter-complaint suggesting that we ought to be talking about something else, or that the perpetrators of one forgotten offense should be brought to justice along with those we’re talking about.
The classic right-wing “so’s your old man” argument was enapsulated in the bumper sticker that sprouted up when Ted Kennedy ran for president shortly after prominently criticizing the policies and practices that led to the Three Mile Island nuclear spill: “No one died at Three Mile Island,” an unsubtle reference Chappaquiddick.
So never mind that the IRS “scandal” has been largely discredited as a scandal at all, or that its “victims” were not New Jersey motorists commuting to work but political activists trying to get a tax subsidy and the power to cloak donors–it’s part of the permanent conservative grievance list and involved alleged abuse of government power, so out it comes again!
That should be cold comfort to Chris Christie, being involved in the lesser of scandals. But that’s the best he can expect from conservative gabbers who don’t really want to help him other than as the enemy of their enemy.
By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Editor, Washington Monthly Political Animal, January 13, 2014
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