Ron Fournier’s eyes are belatedly opened to Chris Christie’s manifest unfitness for office:
A year ago, I wrote: “The smartest move in politics today is to move against Washington and the two major parties. And the smartest man in politics may be Chris Christie.” I take it back.
At the time, the New Jersey governor had channeled the public’s disgust with political dysfunction, chastising House Republican leaders for refusing to allow a vote on a Hurricane Sandy relief bill. Christie said the game-playing that derailed the relief bill showed “why the American people hate Congress.” He accused his own party’s leadership for “selfishness,” “duplicity,” and moral failure.
His approval rating topped 70 percent.
Now his numbers are dropping, because he wasn’t so smart. Rather than stay true to his post-partisan image, Christie ran a hyper-political governor’s office that focused relentlessly on a big re-election win to position him for a 2016 presidential race. In this zero-sum gain culture, Christie enabled (if not directly ordered) an infamous abuse of power: the closure of traffic lanes on the George Washington Bridge in a fit of political retribution.
If not criminal, it was pretty damn stupid. His reputation is in tatters.
Like girls chasing loser bad boys, the supposedly conservative media is forever getting starry-eyed over moderate Republican candidates that they wrongly believe to be electable. For some reason, they never seem to understand that politics is a strong horse game and that the electorate has to be led rather than followed.
But none of these people should be surprised. Christie’s maximum upside was John McCain. It’s not only pointless and self-defeating to elect moderate Republicans, they’re not electable in the first place. If George W. Bush had campaigned in the manner he governed, he would have lost too.