Tag Archives: Chris Christie

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GOP walks tightrope with Trump at top of ballot

Republican hopeful Kelly Ayotte, former Attorney General of the State of New Hampshire, of Nashua, at a debate at Franklin Pierce University in Rindge, N.H., Tuesday, Aug. 31, 2010. The Republican hopefuls are running for the United States Senate seat being vacated by Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H. (AP Photo/Cheryl Senter)

You’ve heard the phrase, no doubt, of “a distinction without a difference.”

How does a politician “support” another politician without “endorsing” that individual?

This is one of the myriad dilemmas facing Republican pols across the nation as the party gets ready to nominate a certifiable huckster as its next nominee for president of the United States.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/05/08/us/politics/trump-endorsements-congress-republicans-gop.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=b-lede-package-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

I refer to Donald J. Trump as the huckster.

Some leading Republican politicians, though, are seeking to hedge their bets in occasionally awkward manners.

Consider the statement of U.S. Sen. Kelly Ayotte, the GOP senator from New Hampshire, who said she can “support” Trump but cannot “endorse” him.

Ayotte is facing a potentially difficult re-election effort as Democrats likely will send Gov. Jean Shaheen against her. Ayotte can’t take the full plunge by endorsing Trump but, by golly, she’s going to support him.

A distinction without a difference?

It looks that way to me.

Other leading Republicans are walking away from Trump. Still others are offering tepid support. Sure, some have endorsed the hotel mogul and reality TV celebrity; former campaign foes New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who once called Trump “unfit” for the presidency, and former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who once called Trump a “cancer on conservatism” have endorsed him.

It’s the Ayotte caveat, though, that I find most intriguing.

I’ve been watching politics for nearly 40 years. I studied political science in college. I became engaged in the presidential election process starting around 1968, when I shook Sen. Robert Kennedy’s hand at a chance meeting one week before an assassin robbed us all of a chance to see if RFK could be elected president.

This truly is the first time I’ve witnessed such intraparty reticence to clutch the coattails of the presumed party presidential nominee.

But it’s there. It’s real.

Sure, Trump has appealed to millions of Americans who claim to be “angry” with politics as usual. This clown “tells it like it is,” supporters tell us, while they ignore — or laugh off — the abject crassness of his rhetoric and the tastelessness of his insults.

Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, another former primary campaign foe, said it well: “I just really believe that the Republican Party has been conned here, and this guy is not a reliable conservative Republican.”

Just today, on “Meet the Press,” Trump said he would consider raising taxes on wealthy Americans, which by my way of thinking runs utterly counter to standard Republican Party tax principles.

This is the problem facing Republicans across the country as they ponder their own political futures. How do they run with someone who says whatever pops into his head?

Or do they seek to split hairs as finely as they can by “supporting” him without “endorsing” him?

It is tough to be a Republican these days.

 

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Dr. Carson may be a tad too candid

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Man, you have to hand it to Dr. Ben Carson.

When politicians switch their allegiance and make surprise endorsements, they usually waffle, wiggle and weasel their way out of answering direction questions as to, “Why?”

Not the doc.

He said he endorsed fellow Republican Donald J. Trump because he couldn’t find another candidate to back, meaning another candidate who (a) could win and (b) fit his own political world view.

There’s another reason: Trump has offered him a spot in a possible (gulp!) Trump administration.

Yep, Carson said so. Out loud. For the record.

Don’t you just love it? I surely do.

Carson’s candor seems to have caught the attention of some legal experts as well. Some have suggested that Trump might have broken federal election law by flat-out “buying” an endorsement by offering a paid position within his administration in the even hell freezes over and Trump is actually elected in November.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is the only other former GOP presidential primary foe to endorse Trump. His own explanation for his switch was so standard. He sought to tap dance all around the fact that he once declared Trump “unfit” to be commander in chief. Now, according to Christie, Trump is, um, “fit.”

Dr. Carson’s candor is refreshing in its way. Politicians are schooled on evasiveness. If you ask a trained pol a direct question about, say, a statement they or someone they support has made, they’re going to revert immediately to a rote response.

It’s as though they’re under some sort of post-hypnotic spell: Ask them a tough question and you trigger a telepathic switch that makes them say what they’re programmed to say.

The good doctor isn’t like that.

I appreciate that he answered so directly: Trump isn’t really my guy. I would have preferred to back someone else. But heck, he made me an offer I couldn’t refuse.

Awesome!

 

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Let’s just see one Trump, the real Trump

carson and trump

Dr. Ben Carson, barely two weeks gone from the Republican Party presidential primary trail, has endorsed Donald J. Trump to be his party’s nominee.

The man who Trump called a “pathological liar” now says Trump has another side. The public sees the bombastic Trump, the one who declares Mexican immigrants are rapists, who says John McCain isn’t a “real” war hero, who says Islam “hates America.”

There’s another Trump lurking under the public man’s skin, Dr. Carson said. It’s more nuanced, more thoughtful, that he’s “malleable.”

Can you believe that?

Well, I can’t.

Carson’s endorsement of Trump sounds about as authentic as New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s endorsement. Recall that Christie said Trump is “unfit” to be commander in chief; he said Trump is campaigning as “entertainer in chief.”

Now he’s on board. He’s all in.

Christie must be angling for a spot somewhere — I shudder to say this out loud — in a Trump Cabinet.

And Carson? There might be a vice-presidential spot in the good doctor’s immediate political future.

As for his assertion that the “other” Donald Trump is much more likable and implicitly electable, I’ll just add this: If he’s out there, my hunch is that the bombastic and boorish Trump would have given way long ago.

 

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Christie’s 180 on Trump fascinates, confounds

chrischristie_0

Let’s see how this tracks.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, while campaigning for the Republican presidential nomination, said that Donald J. Trump is “unfit” to become president.

“We aren’t electing an entertainer in chief,” Christie famously said of his rival. We are electing a commander in chief, he added, and Trump didn’t measure up to the standards required to hold that all-important job.

Then he got beat in New Hampshire. Christie suspended his campaign and this week he tossed all those vibes about Trump out and said he is the “one man” who can lead America.

Politics does have this way of changing one’s stated position. Whether it changes one’s heart and soul, though, cannot be determined.

Check out the endorsement.

He said an interesting thing that deserves just a bit of parsing.

Christie — while making his announcement as well as over the course of the next day and a half — said Trump is the one candidate who will guarantee that “Hillary and Bill Clinton will not get within 10 miles of the White House.”

Hmmm. Think about that for a minute.

Would a President Trump — my hands still tremble when I type those two words next to each other — impose some kind of travel restriction on the former secretary of state? Would he restrict her movement through, say, an executive order?

It’s also interesting that he would include the 42nd president of the United States in that restriction. For crying out loud, governor! The man was elected twice to the very office you once sought.

Oh well, back to reality.

I guess Gov. Christie — who used to impress me as a man of principle and his own brand of panache — has performed the Big Daddy of Flip Flops in endorsing the man he once called “unfit” for the presidency.

 

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Campaign hits fever pitch … so very early

aptopix-gop-2016-trump

As we political junkies seek to make sense of that Republican presidential debate bloodbath, I’m trying to grasp the feverishness with which the media are covering this event and its immediate aftermath.

All the mainstream cable news network political reporters are frothing at the mouth over New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s endorsement of Donald J. Trump.

They’re trying to determine how U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio can ride whatever momentum he gained from the Houston dog-and-pony show with his four GOP debate mates.

Some of them were actually aghast at how Trump and Christie “tag teamed” their attacks on Rubio. Indeed, I was utterly flabbergasted as I listened to Trump ridicule Rubio in such a juvenile manner. Listen to this Republican presidential campaign frontrunner try to string sentences together.

Trump is so astonishingly inarticulate that it utterly boggles my mind how in the world we’ve come to this point in this presidential nominating process.

Others were wondering: Whatever happened to U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, who figures to do well in the Texas primary coming up Tuesday?

Oh yeah, no one’s talking  today about Ohio Gov. John Kasich or Dr. Ben Carson.

I guess my wonderment lies in how it’s gotten to this pitch so early in what I thought was supposed to be a marathon.

Is this what we’re going to get from now until the nominating conventions adjourn this summer? Or will this white-hot coverage continue until the election this November?

Man, oh man. I don’t know if I have the stamina to keep up with it. I might have tune this out — if only long enough to catch my breath.

And hold on to my sanity.

 

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As GOP field thins out, so might Trump’s support

republican-elephant-668x501

An interesting dynamic might be unfolding as the Republican presidential field continues to thin out.

It involves Donald J. Trump and the support he’s been able to get so far.

I believe it’s fair to ask: Who are the voters supporting the dropouts going to endorse?

The GOP field now is down to seven candidates; it started out at 17, if you’ll recall.

Some of the so-called “establishment” candidates have packed it in. The latest significant casualty was New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. Others have gone by the wayside and none of them appears to be friends of Trump, who’s managed to insult his way to the top of the GOP heap.

I’m wondering if Trump’s support now will dwindle as Republican voters who were loyal, say, to Christie, or Mike Huckabee, or Rick Santorum, or Bobby Jindal start looking around for someone else to support.

Ted Cruz is mining the ultraconservative voters. Marco Rubio, although now severely damaged by the battering he took in the most recent GOP debate, is on the hunt for the same folks. John Kasich, my favorite Republican, also is beginning to gather some steam. Jeb Bush also could find himself thrust into the game.

All of these individuals stand to gain from the remnants of support that rallied around the candidates who’ve departed the campaign trail.

Where does that leave Trump? With his base of support, comprising voters who somehow are infatuated with the candidate’s brashness and don’t seem to care one little bit that he doesn’t seem to possess a political philosophy on which he would govern.

Let’s just watch this thing continue to play out.

I’ve seen the polls that show Trump still leading in South Carolina. However, as we’ve seen in previous election cycles, the Palmetto State is where the GOP campaign has been known to get nasty … as in real nasty.

I’m now wondering how well Trump will hold up when the mud starts flying.

 

 

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Gov. Christie goes out with a bang

christie-vs-rubio-rivalry-23620

As I ponder the latest round of exits from the Republican Party presidential primary field, I am struck by the nature of one departure in particular.

So long, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, but your bowing out is one for the books.

It’s not the statement you made. It was fairly typical.

It was your final act on the stage.

Christie managed to inflict potentially mortal political wounds on Sen. Marco Rubio during a ferocious exchange in advance of the New Hampshire primary. He exposed Rubio’s lack of experience and his robot-like demeanor. Christie questioned whether Rubio had the chops earned during his single term in the Senate to ascend to the highest office in the land.

He did a masterful job of skinning a competitor alive.

What happened then? Rubio finished far back in the field in the primary that was won by Donald J. Trump. As for Christie, he got zero bounce for his effort. He, too, finished in single digits.

I am sorry to see Gov. Christie leave the race. He’s one of the grownups in the GOP field that’s still being dominated by Trump and Sen. Ted Cruz.

At least, though, another man is now making some noise: Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who has emerged as my favorite Republican running for president. Heck, he might even be my favorite candidate … period!

But today, however, I want to doff my cap to the fiery, feisty New Jersey governor who went down swinging.

 

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GOP now settling in on (mostly) serious hopefuls

carly and chris

Let’s call it a form of political natural selection.

The presidential primary campaign slogs on from state to state and as each state’s votes are counted, the candidates at or near the pack of the pack, bottom of the heap, end of the line — whatever — find themselves with little to zero support.

Why keep fighting?

Two more Republicans threw in the towel today: Chris Christie and Carly Fiorina called it a campaign. They’re suspended, which is a nicer way of saying they’re kaput.

Now it’s up to the GOP grownups to march on.

Except that the remaining candidates isn’t composed entirely of grownups. Donald J. Trump is the frontrunner. Enough said there.

The Democrats started this race with five hopefuls. Three of them dropped out. Now it’s just Hillary vs. Bernie.

But the Republican field still comprises seven candidates. For the life of me I’m not sure why Jim Gilmore is still in the hunt. Ben Carson also must be assessing his chances of ever attaining the White House. Jeb Bush? I had high hopes for him; silly me. Before he bid adieu to this campaign, Christie did a masterful job of peeling the bark off of Marco Rubio at the most recent GOP debate.

Let’s see, who’s left . . . after Trump?

Don’t get me started on the Cruz Missile, Sen. Cruz of Texas. My disdain for him rivals how I feel toward Trump.

My main man is still John Kasich, the serious-minded Ohio governor who’s now trying to call himself a “staunch conservative,” when in reality he’s demonstrated a nice bipartisan touch that today’s hard-core right-wingers deem to be soft, squishy, RINOish.

There will be more Republican dropouts in the next few days. Then we’ll be down to the real serious contenders.

Just as natural selection works wonders in the wild, it does have its way of creating a race where only the fittest can compete.

 

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Both major parties seeing huge transformation?

Horserace

I spent most of my day in airports and on airplanes today, so I was a bit out of the political loop.

Until I got home.

Then I found out that Donald J. Trump won the Republican primary in New Hampshire in a yuuuuge way. I also found out that Bernie Sanders buried Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary.

What does it mean?

Beats the devil out of me.

I’m not going to suggest just yet that both major political parties are in the midst of a major makeover.

Sanders’ win was expected, given that he is a virtual favorite son, as he represents next-door Vermont in the U.S. Senate. Clinton admitted as much earlier this evening when she conceded the New Hampshire primary to Sanders.

On she and Sanders will march to South Carolina, where a hefty African-American voter base is expected to give Clinton a built-in advantage.

Now, what about them Republicans?

Trump won by a lot. Perhaps the bigger tempest will occur among those who finished behind Trump. John Kasich finished in second place. Now the Ohio governor becomes the latest favorite of the GOP “establishment wing” to challenge Trump. What happened to Marco Rubio? Or Ted Cruz? Or Chris Christie?

As I finish up this post, I am hearing reports on cable TV news that Christie’s bid might be over. He savaged Rubio at the latest GOP debate, which appears to have inflicted near-mortal wounds on the young senator from Florida. Christie, though, didn’t get the bounce he expected. He’s heading for New Jersey, the TV talking heads report, to consider his options.

Look, I’ve noted already that some serious balloting is yet to occur. We’ve got the Super Tuesday event in early March, which includes big, bad Texas taking part in that primary donnybrook.

Will these results determine the future of both major political parties? Perhaps.

However, so help me, this election is impossible to chart with semblance of certainty.

 

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Now it’s Marco Rubio in the bulls-eye

christie-vs-rubio-rivalry-23620

It’s interesting to me how the center of attention among the Republican presidential candidates keeps changing.

Donald J. Trump? Step aside for now. Ted Cruz? Take a seat. Ben Carson? Well, your time might be up anyway.

Today’s target appears to be Marco Rubio, the young senator from Florida who this evening took some heavy incoming fire from Chris Christie . . . among others.

It’s a moving target.

Perhaps eventually the center of attention will settle on one individual. My guess is that it’ll be either Trump or Cruz. With GOP candidates dropping out after poor finishes, the field of candidates will narrow and the “targets of opportunity” will be reduced accordingly.

I was particularly amused by Christie’s attack line this evening when he chided Rubio for his canned-sounding responses to questions. He’s too rehearsed, too polished, too scripted, Christie seemed to say. The young senator — who’s not seeking re-election this year — needs to have an executive job, Christie said, like being a governor, a job Christie holds in New Jersey.

Indeed, some media are reporting this evening that the remaining governors and former governors in the GOP field — Christie, John Kasich of Ohio and Jeb Bush of Florida — took particular delight in unloading on the others who don’t have that kind of government “executive experience.”

Frankly, I cannot blame the governors for taking umbrage at the success some of these others are enjoying in this campaign — at the expense of the governors. I mean after all, we’ve seen several governors and ex-governors already drop out: Rick Perry, Bobby Jindal and Scott Walker all have tossed in the towel.

Now, though, the target du jour is Sen. Marco Rubio, the latest poster boy for the so-called “establishment wing” of the Republican Party.

New Hampshire’s primary is set for Tuesday. Voters in both parties will be casting actual secret ballots in secure polling places for the individuals they believe should become the next president.

After this first round of voting, the question is likely to become: Who will be the next candidate to take the heavy fire?