Tag Archives: Chris Christie

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Blame the messenger, folks

In an era when Democrats and Republicans can find so little common ground, both sides seem to agree on at least one element of today’s poisonous political atmosphere: It’s the media’s fault.

GOP, Dems agree: It’s the media’s fault

Interesting. Not surprising, though.

According to The Hill newspaper, Democrats say the media are too focused on the Affordable Care Act; Republicans, meanwhile, say the media should spend more time covering corruption among Democrats at the state level of government.

There’s just no pleasing everyone, you know?

I guess Republicans wish the media would concentrate more on Democrats gone bad than focusing on Republicans. Meanwhile, the GOP has been winning the public debate over the ACA by out-shouting the other side and, therefore, snagging most of the media’s attention.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, the Republican who’s been fending off a snoopy press over the so-called “Bridgegate” controversy, has made an art form out of badgering reporters at press conferences. He calls them out by name when they ask what he considers to be unfounded questions. The public seems to eat it up, so Christie keeps delivering the goods in the form of one-line scolds that make for good sound bites on — and I love the irony here — the evening news.

As a former practitioner of daily print journalism, I harbor no particular ill will toward pols who blame the media for doing their job. It goes with the territory, just as politicians getting pounded by constituents for one issue or another goes with their territory.

When the media stop getting complaints and everyone just falls in love with reporters, well, that’s when I would start to worry.

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Gov. Christie trips over his own mojo

It’s been reported that New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie has gotten his “mojo” back after a rough few months fighting off reports of possible cover-up in that infamous George Washington Bridge lane-closing kerfuffle.

In a way, he has. He hired a law firm to do an internal investigation of whether the governor knew anything about the lane closure, which reportedly was done to get back at the Democratic mayor of Fort Lee, N.J., for refusing to endorse the Republican governor’s re-election.

The firm hired by Christie then cleared the guy who hired it of any wrongdoing. Imagine that. Shocking, I tell ya.

http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/202124-report-christie-apologizes-for-occupied-territories

Then he jets off to Las Vegas to meet with prominent Republican donors where he — oops! — refers to those so-called “occupied territories” now known as Gaza and the West Bank bordering Israel.

Well, it seems that one of those GOP fat cats is one Sheldon Adelson, a big-time Republican donor and a long-time ardent supporter of Israel, where the term “occupied territories” is stricken from the political lexicon.

As The Hill reported: “Many Israelis object to referring to areas where Palestinians live but Israel maintains a military presence as ‘occupied territories’” because they believe the term implicitly suggests that Israeli troops should not be in the area.”

Christie apologized to Adelson, who accepted the governor’s mea culpa.

It just goes to show how politicians need to be sure they don’t let their mojo get in the way of better judgment and use of words.

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No surprise: Paul wins CPAC straw poll

And the winner is …

Rand Paul, senator from Kentucky, and now a presumed Republican candidate for president of the United States.

What did the senator win? The straw poll taken at the Conservative Action Political Conference meeting in Maryland.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2014/03/08/rand_paul_wins_cpac_straw_poll_121856.html

He finished far ahead of the second-place candidate, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas. Dr. Ben Carson, a noted neurosurgeon finished third, with New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie finishing fourth. Cruz pulled 11 percent of the vote, 20 percentage points behind Paul.

So, there you have it. Sen. Paul is now the presumptive frontrunner for the 2016 GOP presidential nomination.

I know what you’re thinking. This is a straw poll. It matters not one bit. It was taken among members of the most fervent wing of the Republican Party. What about the rest of the party faithful?

Well, allow me to let you in on what I believe is a reality in modern GOP politics: CPAC represents the party these days. The middle ground in the GOP is shrinking faster than Lake Meredith in the summer. The CPAC crowd is calling the shots, or so it appears.

I normally wouldn’t give Paul’s “victory” in this straw poll much credence, except that the political landscape is changing before our eyes. Paul’s form of libertarian-strain conservatism seems to play well with the CPAC wing of the party. Rest assured, when the time comes for Paul to make up his mind about running — and I’m betting he’ll do it — he will look back at the CPAC straw poll as some sort of vindication for the message he’s been delivering.

He’s in step with most Republicans in wanting to get rid of the Affordable Care Act. He’s opposing almost all of President Obama’s domestic and foreign policy agenda. He thinks the Benghazi and the IRS stories still have legs.

He fits right in with this version of modern Republicanism.

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Gov. Walker’s now the tainted one

Now that New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s Republican star appears to be fading, establishment GOP kingmakers have been looking for someone who can head off the tea party express in advance of the 2016 presidential campaign.

They thought they had one in Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker.

Until now.

http://www.thenation.com/blog/178464/e-mails-charges-probes-chris-christie-no-scott-walker#

It turns out Walker’s office is in a bit of a jam on two fronts.

First, emails have surfaced that show Walker’s staffers conducting political business on public — meaning government — time. Which is against Wisconsin election law, as it is in Texas and all the rest of these United States, for that matter. The emails purport to show communication between Walker’s official staff and campaign staffers.

That, by itself, is a crime. People could get prosecuted and sent to jail if convicted.

Then there is the other, equally troubling, aspect of the governor’s staff behavior.

It involves some amazingly hateful emails the governor’s staffers shared with each other, also while they’re on the clock. They illustrate an outright disdain and near-hatred for, oh, gay people, immigrants, African-Americans, Jews, Muslims and, oh yes, Democrats.

These are the various demographic groups who reside in Wisconsin and who are subject to the laws enacted by the state’s government, which is led by their governor, Scott Walker.

That the governor would condone such behavior is utterly beyond my understanding. How could staffers feel emboldened to send these message to each other using public communications equipment? Is it because the governor has given his blessing, or has he chosen to ignore it?

Let’s not be coy about this. The feeding frenzy has started among those who are critical of the governor. It likely won’t end until Walker decides (a) fire those involved, (b) apologize to Wisconsin residents, or (c) announce he won’t run for president in 2016.

I’m thinking he’s got to do all the above.

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Perry-Christie animus is showing within GOP

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s big re-election victory last year was heralded by Texas Republicans.

A lot of Texans welcomed it. A lot didn’t.

One of those Texans who didn’t much care for Christie’s victory apparently was fellow GOP governor, Rick Perry.

Imagine that. My hunch is that Christie shouldn’t take it too personally. Perry doesn’t like a lot of politicians, particularly those who might steal his thunder.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/02/07/politics/christie-perry-2016/index.html?sr=sharebar_twitter

A lot has happened, of course, since Christie’s victory. His brand has been damaged by that bridge lane-closing controversy that’s getting bigger and more complicated every day.

Still, Perry and Christie are rivals for a possible GOP presidential nomination battle in 2016. Both are considered possible candidates. They’re both big hitters in the Republican Governors Association, at least for now. Perry is stepping down from his office next January to “pursue other interests,” such as exploring whether to run for president again.

Perry’s comments after Christie’s big win have been quite instructive. “He was a successful governor in New Jersey,” Perry told ABC’s “This Week.” “Now does that transcend to the country? We’ll see in later years and months to come. We’re all different states. Is a conservative in New Jersey a conservative in the rest of the country?”

Christie’s brand of conservatism surely doesn’t much look like it does here in Texas.

As CNN.com reported: “In Perry-world, Christie is seen as pompous and disrespectful, both to his fellow governors and the sense of collegial decorum that has ruled the governors association for years. To Christie and his allies on the committee, Perry is regarded as unserious, past his prime and too conservative for the national stage.”

I would add that the “pompous and disrespectful” label also could be hung on Perry as well, given his recent job-poaching forays into other states that didn’t go down well with his fellow governors.

Two big egos may be set to clash at some point as the next presidential campaign gets going. The boom will be heard all across the nation.

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LBJ was the toughest of the tough guys

A friend and I were visiting the other day about New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s troubles over the bridge lane-closing fiasco.

Some of Christie’s critics have called him a bully. “I have a three-word answer to that,” my friend said. “Lyndon Baines Johnson.”

Agreed. Ol’ Lyndon was tough, vengeful, mean, coarse, profane … and whatever else you want to say about someone who knows how to exact painful revenge. I think my friend’s point is that LBJ makes Christie look like a piker in the bully department.

Then another friend wandered into my workplace the other day, Rick Crawford, a former Republican state representative who now sells commercial real estate in Amarillo. Crawford’s been around the political pea patch for longer than many folks. He grew up here, knows the lay of the land, knows many big hitters.

As we talked, the conversation turned to Lyndon Johnson. Crawford made a remark about LBJ’s decision to close the Amarillo Air Force Base in the late 1960s. He repeated something I have heard ever since I arrived here in January 1995, that Johnson closed the base because he “hated the Panhandle” and because the region voted for Barry Goldwater in the 1964 presidential election, which LBJ won in a landslide.

Whoa. Not quite. I reminded my friend of something he admitted not knowing. It was that of the 26 counties comprising the Texas Panhandle, Goldwater won majorities in eight of them. And, I noted, Potter County — which is where the air base was located — voted for Lyndon Johnson.

So the question has lingered for nearly 50 years: Did Lyndon Johnson act out of spite or did he make a strategic decision based on a needs assessment given to him by the Pentagon?

Crawford and I talked about LBJ’s friends here who have insisted the president acted nobly. I have concluded that the LBJ-hates-Amarillo reason for closing the base has evolved into urban legend. It’s one of those things no one can prove, given that I am quite sure no one living in the Panhandle was in the room — the Oval Office, the Situation Room, the White House kitchen, wherever — when Johnson made that fateful decision.

The story, as it’s been told and retold over many decades since — and with embellishments added along the way — does illustrate President Johnson’s toughness.

I don’t doubt he was one mean SOB. I’ve read enough accounts over the years about how he treated those around him. I’ve heard many stories of how he could bully lawmakers into voting the way he wanted them to vote on legislation. I know all that.

However, I’m waiting for someone to prove he nearly destroyed the economy of a region in his home state just because a portion of it voted for the other guy in a presidential election.

Oh, but yes. Lyndon Baines Johnson was a whole lot more of a bully than Chris Christie ever thought of being.

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Christie’s woes looking more like Watergate

It’s fun to discuss public affairs with people who, like me, are old enough to remember history as it unfolded.

A friend of mine and I were talking yesterday about the Chris Christie mess in New Jersey, involving whether the New Jersey governor knew about the closing of lanes on the George Washington Bridge that caused all that traffic havoc on the world’s busiest motor vehicle span.

Christie insists he didn’t know anything in advance. He categorically denies ordering the lanes closed in retaliation against the Democratic mayor’s failure to endorse the Republican governor’s re-election bid in 2013.

My friend and I were recalling Watergate and how this controversy is beginning to resemble the track that the Watergate scandal took in 1972 and into 1973.

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/02/chris-christie-scott-walker-republican-governors-2016-presidential-election-103133.html?hp=t1_3

For those who are too young to remember, here’s a quick primer:

On June 17, 1972, some burglars broke into the Democratic Party headquarters at the Watergate office complex in Washington, D.C. The cops arrested them. The Washington Post covered the event as a crime story. They buried the initial report of the burglary deep inside the paper.

Two young reporters working the Metro desk, Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, were assigned to cover the cop story. But they began to smell a rat. Sources were telling them the burglary was more than what it appeared to be. Big hitters were involved. Bernstein and Woodward believed their snitches and sought more time to work the story. Their editors blew them off, telling them they didn’t think much of their tips. The reporters persisted. Finally, they talked their editors into letting them work their sources more aggressively.

President Richard Nixon was revealed to have ordered the cover-up of the investigation. We learned about enemies lists and we learned about how the president abused his power to cover his own backside. Nixon resigned rather than face certain impeachment.

Is the Chris Christie tracking inevitably toward a similar course? I don’t know. Republican officials think it’s a trumped-up controversy. They claim it’s phony and doesn’t merit the kind of coverage it’s getting in the media. But this kind of thing has a way of developing a life of its own. Officials are coming out of the shadows and saying the governor knew more than he says he did. One trail has led to alleged misuse of Hurricane Sandy relief money by the governor’s office.

I’ll refrain henceforth from attaching the “gate” suffix to this controversy. There’s only real “gate” scandal, but this one just might — perhaps, maybe — end as badly for the person at its center as the Watergate scandal did for the 37th president of the United States.

Stay tuned.

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Rudy blasts Democrats for ‘piling on’ Christie, really?

Rudy Giuliani needs to get out more.

The former mayor of New York City and one-time Republican candidate for president of the United States has blasted Democrats for piling on Republican New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie over the bridge lane-closing controversy that is threatening to blow up into a bona fide scandal.

Giuliani slams Dem ‘pile-on’ against Christie

Really, Mr. Mayor?

Is it a surprise that members of the “other” party would go after a leading politician who’s been caught up in a controversy? Gosh. That’s never happened before.

Oh wait. Yes it has. It has happened when Republican politicians began pouncing all over Democrats, starting with Bill Clinton and the Whitewater investigation, which turned into something resulting in the impeachment of a Democratic president. It is happening now with Republicans continuing to roil the waters over the Benghazi, Libya consulate attack in September 2012. It’s also happening with GOP lawmakers making hay over the IRS controversy and the agency’s vetting of conservative political action groups’ efforts to obtain tax-exempt status.

So now Democrats are going after a Republican governor.

Big deal, Mr. Mayor.

From my perch out here in the middle of the country, that’s how politics is played.

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Christie ‘scandal’ getting pretty darn curious

My friends on the right are outraged at the “mainstream media’s” addiction to the Chris Christie “Bridgegate” scandal.

They’d better get used to it, because it doesn’t appear as though it’s going to wither away any time soon.

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/01/chris-chris-new-jersey-george-washington-bridge-scandal-david-wildstein-102977.html?hp=t1

A letter has surfaced now that suggests Christie knew at the time that one of his key aides ordered the closing of lanes on the George Washington Bridge, the busiest span in the world — and that it might have been in retaliation for the refusal by Fort Lee, N.J.’s Democratic mayor to endorse the Republican governor’s re-election effort.

The letter’s assertion contradicts Christie’s statement that he didn’t know anything until he read about it in the press.

This is what happens when a high-profile politician who portrays himself in a certain manner is accused of doing things that run counter to that public image. Christie, who many people believe wants to run for president in 2016, has cast himself as a hands-on, no-nonsense chief executive. If that’s the case, then how could he not know that his chief of staff, Bridget Kelly, would order the lanes closed, resulting in a horrendous traffic bottleneck.

Now we learn about alleged misuse of federal relief funds dedicated to help New Jersey residents recover from Superstorm Sandy.

No one has accused Christie of ordering lane shutdown himself. Frankly, I don’t think he would be so stupid.

However, this controversy is beginning to take on a life of its own the way other controversies have grown into full-blown scandals.

Two examples stand out: The Watergate burglary in 1972 turned from a criminal investigation into a constitutional crisis involving presidential abuse of power; Whitewater turned from a probe into Bill and Hillary Clinton’s real estate ventures into a scandal that involved a presidential dalliance with a White House intern and his lying under oath to a federal grand jury about whether he did those nasty things with the young woman.

It’s looking as though, regarding Gov. Christie’s involvement in this bridge lane-closing, that history may be about to repeat itself.

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Fired aide may hold key to Gov. Christie’s future

A special committee assigned to investigate the bridge lane-closing scandal that just won’t go away has within its power the ability to determine one key question.

What did Gov. Chris Christie know about the lane-closure and when did he know it?

I should add that the panel can determine the motives behind the closure.

http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2014/01/16/22325075-christie-campaign-organization-on-subpoena-list-in-bridge-probe-source-says?lite

Just ask Bridget Kelly, the fired former deputy chief of staff to Christie.

Someone ordered the lanes closed on the world’s busiest bridge, the George Washington, which connects New Jersey to New York City. At issue is why. Some have alleged the lanes were closed to get back at the Democratic mayor of Fort Lee, N.J., who had declined to endorse the Republican governor, Christie, for re-election.

Now … is that why Kelly wrote the email that declared it was “time for some traffic problems” on the bridge? Only she can answer that.

What’s more, did she tell her boss in advance of the closure that it was going to happen? She has the answer to that one, too.

Put the woman under oath and make her tell the truth under fear of prosecution for perjury. Then we might get to the bottom of this matter.

I have no particular desire to see Gov. Christie caught in a lie. I hope he told the truth the other day when he said he didn’t know in advance of the lane closures, or that he didn’t even know that the bridge traffic had been constricted so terribly.

Why is this story so important? Because Christie is considered a possible — if not probable — candidate for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination.

My desire, though, is to find out from the one person — Kelly — whether the governor knew about the closure, whether he ordered the closure to get back at the mayor and whether he felt he needed to teach the mayor some kind of cruel lesson that simply got out of control.

I’m actually a little weary of this story. Tell us what happened, Bridget Kelly … and why.