Hanging out

What was he thinking?

Did you see this picture of Chris Christie standing behind Donald Trump after endorsing him? Manhattan Infidel wonders what Christie was thinking, because the look on his face was disturbing. Here are a few of the thoughts M.I. thought might have been going through Christie's head.

Why do birds suddenly appear/ every time Donald Trump is near/ just like me/they long to be/ close to him.

This won’t harm my 2020 run for president will it?

Maybe this isn’t a good idea. Too late. Already sold my soul.

After listing many more possible thoughts of Chris Christie, Manhattan Infidel summarizes,

You see readers, being a blogger has advantages. I know all your thoughts. All of them! The first time they tell you that the world’s turning and you just can’t quite believe it because everything looks like it’s standing still. I can feel it. The turn of the Earth. The ground beneath our feet is spinning at 1,000 miles an hour and the entire planet is hurtling around the sun at 67,000 miles an hour, and I can feel it. I’m a blogger.

Read more here.

A man who knows where his bread is being buttered

Jonathan Tobin writes in Commentary about the Christie endorsement of Trump:

...The alliance between the two will be analyzed over the coming days mostly in terms of their not dissimilar personalities. Unlike the businessman, Christie has a record of political accomplishment. But they share a truculent style in which abuse of critics and shouting down rivals is their preferred form of discourse.

...Just as he only spoke of himself rather than his party’s nominee when he gave the keynote address at the 2012 Republican National Convention, now, too, he is merely thinking of a chance to get ahead.

...That a pair of northeastern moderates should now be in position to seize control of a deeply conservative party with its base in the south and the west is a bizarre turn of events that no one could have predicted. Rubio and Cruz battered Trump and exposed him as an incoherent scandal-ridden demagogue out of touch with the views of most Republicans at Thursday night’s debate. But it’s not clear that will change many minds. It remains to be seen whether conservatives have a sufficient answer to Trump’s coup that will enable them to prevent Trump from sweeping to more victories next Tuesday.

Read more here.

Getting crowded in the bully pulpit

Chris Christie trips the scales back in Trump's favor. Is Christie looking for a cabinet post as Secretary of Stopping Transportation?

Why has Christie endorsed Trump?

So why has Chris Christie endorsed Donald Trump this morning? Because Trump could not handle Marco Rubio last night, and has therefore brought in the bully Christie who handled Rubio in earlier debates? Is Christie looking for a spot in the Trump administration?

Breaking News: Chris Christie endorsing Donald Trump!

Nick Gass reports in Politico,

Chris Christie announced his endorsement of Donald Trump on Friday in Fort Worth, Texas.
"I am proud to be here to endorse Donald Trump for president of the United States," he said, noting his relationship with the candidate's family.
Story Continued Below
"He's a real talent," Trump said, before receiving the endorsement.

Maggie Haberman reminds us in the New York Times,

But his backing of Mr. Trump comes after weeks of him saying that it was time for the “entertainment” portion of the race to end, and as he had said that the type of executive leadership that a governor has is important.

Read more here.

GOP race goes South

I would think that Ted Cruz is feeling good about his third place finish in New Hampshire. Did you know that he spent just $600,000 there, compared to the $36,000,000 spent by Jeb Bush and $15,000,000 spent by Marco Rubio?

Will Bush and Rubio now go after each other in a South Carolina bloodbath? If Rubio knocks out Bush, who will take on Donald Trump?

I will miss Christie, Paul, and Fiorina in the next debates.

Chris Christie and Carly Fiorina drop out

News Corp Chairman Rupert Murdoch tweeted that "Suicide bomber Chris Christie damages victim while blowing himself up." Christie and Carly Fiorina have both dropped out of the GOP race.

Of course, Murdoch's remarks referred to the way Christie ridiculed Marco Rubio in Saturday night's debate.

Karma's a bitch

Chris Christie has failed to make the cut for the South Carolina debate. Read more here.

Why are Rubio and Cruz the only ones who are saying Obama is competently achieving his goals to transform America?

Rush Limbaugh shined his truth detector on Cruz, Rubio, and Christie today, and, as always came away with a very different perspective about the attacks on Rubio leveled by Chris Christie in Saturday night's debate in New Hampshire.

On the Republican side, what do you think the most talked about aspect of the Republican debate Saturday night is? Without question it is the exchanges between Governor Christie and Senator Rubio, and Senator Rubio's repeated contention that Barack Obama is not incompetent, that he's not bumbling around and screwing things up accidentally. That instead what Obama is doing is explicit, by design, and on purpose.

...There are only two people that I'm aware of that are making a consistent point of this. Rubio, actually, is atop of this. Rubio and Cruz are the only two in the entire Republican field. Carly Fiorina may have said something like this occasionally. With Rubio, it's a theme. With Cruz, it's close to a theme. And the real question is: Why do the other Republicans in the field disagree?

...The governors will not admit who Obama is. The governors will not admit it, and Trump does not agree that Obama is purposely doing this. Trump thinks he's a blithering incompetent.

...Ted Cruz had a great night, and the evidence of that is that nobody wanted to talk about it. If Ted Cruz had had a bad night, folks, you would still be hearing about it, everywhere. CNN, MSNBC, Fox, ABC, NBC, CBS.

...What do you think you're gonna get when you have ABC host a debate? Stop complaining! If you're gonna make the decision to go there you have to realize that Martha Raddatz wants Hillary Clinton to be elected and Hillary Clinton's weakness is foreign policy. Ted Cruz comes along and happens to run rings around Hillary or anybody else in foreign policy. She's gonna try to take him out, and she's not gonna show any respect at all.

...Now, folks, you go out and talk to actual Republican primary voters. You go out, outside of Washington, outside New York, go out to where these primaries and caucuses are being held, and you will find that this is exactly what has propelled Republicans to the polls in droves in 2010 and 2014. It's not the belief, it's not the theory, it is the knowledge that Obama's doing this on purpose, and there isn't and hasn't been any push-back. And Republican voters are livid. Obama has said he's doing it on purpose. He has said his purpose is to transform the nation.

... They do not dare say that Obama's doing it on purpose because they have all worked with Barack Obama, in one way or another, every one of these governors, many of them, and even a lot of Republicans in the House and Senate have worked with Obama to advance certain elements of the agenda.

We've worked with Obama on the spending bills. We have worked with Obama, or we want to, on amnesty and immigration. There are some on the Republican side who want to work with Obama when it comes to issues on the so-called War on Women. But when you have worked with Obama, when you have asked Obama to come to your state, and when you have embraced Obama and done everything you can to get assistance from Obama, well, you can't turn around and then say Obama is purposefully trying to transform the country 'cause that makes you look like an idiot.

...I think the real important question here to ask and answer is why won't anybody but Rubio and Cruz say it? Because that's essentially, if you had to encapsulate what the Republican primary is, it's about that. Like they keep harping on, Christie -- or it might have been Trump, I don't know who it was -- jumped on Rubio, maybe it was a moderator in the post-debate analysis. Why does he keep campaigning against Obama? Obama's not on the ballot. Obama's seven years old. Obama's in his last year. Why does he keep running against Obama?

Because Hillary and Bernie Sanders want to continue what Obama has started, and it is the transformation of America. The Republican base is fully aware of it. The Republican primary voters have been begging the Republican Party to stop this since 2010, since 2009 when Obama took office.

Read more here.

"There it is!"

The memorized 25 second speech! (and the fight for third place)



Ace of Spades writes this about Rubio:

He'll have to do a bit of work to overcome this. Maybe he'll have to try to prepare less, so he we can see his mind actually engaging with a question, instead of just locating the most relevant "module" to repeat.

...But who knows, if the bubble boy can finally get out of the bubble and show something real, or something more substantial than 25-seconds of micro-wonk modules, maybe he can get back on track and be the Establishment's Great Last Hope again.

Read more here.

“Politicians will always disappoint you.”

Apparently National Review is getting a lot of criticism for their Against Trump symposium. Jonah Goldberg defends National Review:

let me just say up front that rather than this being a low point or an epic fail or a betrayal, this is in fact one of National Review’s finest moments. If it costs us subscribers, or readers, or advertisers (all of which I doubt), so be it. What is it the Marines say? “Pain is weakness leaving the body.” Well, such losses to National Review would be like dross being skimmed off freshly forged steel.

...When Donald Trump signed that pledge to support the GOP nominee a few months ago, scads of people asked whether I would do likewise. Can they really not see the category error here? My job -- our job -- is to write and say the truth as I see it.

...There are, in fact, many establishments. One of them -- the one Sarah Palin and many others claim is the most pernicious -- is rallying to Donald Trump. The GOP-consultant and K-Street crowd is coming around to him, just like the crony-capitalist ethanol lobby in Iowa is coming around.

...The Republican party is in the election-winning business first and foremost. And that’s largely as it should be. That’s partly why former National Review publisher, the late, great Bill Rusher always used to tell the new hires at NR to be on guard: “Politicians will always disappoint you.”

The reason politicians will disappoint principled conservatives -- and, for that matter, principled liberals and libertarians -- is that there is always an inherent tradeoff between the purity of principle and the necessities of electoral politics and the limitations of what can be done via government action. National Review has always recognized this tension, which is immortalized in the rule of thumb that we should support “the most conservative candidate electable.”

...Ted Cruz isn’t my first choice, mostly because I think he will have problems getting elected (though claims he’s unelectable go too far). I’d rather Rubio or Christie. In a two-man race of Cruz vs. Trump, however, it’s no contest. The whole point of trying to elect the most conservative candidate possible is premised on the idea that one is choosing among conservatives in the first place. Going by record and evidence, in that two-candidate sample, there’s only one conservative to pick.

Read more here.

Did Rubio emerge as the establishment's last man standing?

Ace's take on Thursday's debate:

1. Ted Cruz won in three different ways:

First, he won on debate points. This matters the least, but it's still important. Especially just to deny this win to Rubio.

Second, and this is big, he stood up to the Big Bad Bully Alpha Male Trump and won. Other people have stood up to Trump -- and have come out looking foolish and diminished. Cruz prevailed.

Even when people say he lost on the "NY Values" exchange (an assessment I don't share), he then lost while doing the actually important thing, appearing to be an in-command alpha sparring with another alpha.

Third, he appeared more human and likable. This has always been his downfall. From the get-go, I've said that while I like Cruz on policy and his anti-establishment impulses, I just can't see him as a plausible president. He's a combination of geeky, faux-pious, and condescending.

However, in last night's debate, he came across more genuine and likable. He also kept his good spirits in every single argument, which I don't think anyone else did.

2. Trump kind of won just by not appearing to be a maniac.

On the podcast, I mentioned that he seemed to have command of the facts by noting that China's contract with Boeing calls the planes to be built in China. Ekdahl asked me if that was actually true, and I said, "Well, I've heard it before -- wait, actually, now that I think about it, I've only heard it from Trump."

Someone on Twitter claiming to be a former Boeing worker tells me this is in fact mostly false. He tells me that Boeing is permitting China to do some work on the planes, like putting in seats and giving them the final paintjob; but all other production will be done by Boeing in America.

So.... That seems "mostly false" to me.

That said, Trump's goal is not to win in these things, nor to even appear informed. His goal is just to not be so outclassed, or so uninformed, as to disqualify himself. He often flirts with exactly this, but "mostly false" is, for Trump, a victory. "Mostly false" means "slightly true" and that's good enough for him.

This was his best performance, meaning it was pretty weak, but again, he's not playing to win, he's playing just to not be disqualified in terms of complete incompetency and unsuitability.

He prevailed there... kinda narrowly, but he did.

3. Marco Rubio actually was angry -- no joking, he actually was trying to appear angry to "channel" the base's anger, I suppose. David French, I think, commented upon Marco Rubio's anger.

I don't think he did that well. He did okay. But it's critical to keep in mind the sales pitch of Marco Rubio: That this is a once-in-a-generation natural political talent; that he is so informed and so persuasive when he speaks that he brings people to tears, like Obama; that no matter how much you oppose Rubio's support for amnesty and college Kangaroo rape courts, you must vote for him anyway, because he's such an amazing candidate as far as performance and charisma that he's our only real shot at beating Hillary.

So here's the problem: When Ted Cruz, and maybe even Chris Christie and even Donald Trump kind of beat you, you can't offer yourself up as that once-in-a-generation talent, now can you?

His gun answer was good. People seemed to like his oppo dump on Cruz, but I imagine it's mostly people who hate Cruz who liked that (that is, Rubio fans, Jeb fans, etc.)

Overall -- a fine performance, but a fine performance isn't enough for him. He's been sold as exceptional. "Fine" doesn't cover the rent, Marco.

Also, his intense anger about everything, and his wild eyes flashing with emotion, were very upsetting to common, everyday independent voters. I hope he can moderate his angry rhetoric, because I don't ever want to have to comfort my crying children after witnessing a Jekyll-and-Hyde performance from the Angry Marco Rubio.

4. Chris Christie told Marco Rubio to shut up, which was wonderful, and so while he kind of didn't do anything on stage except lie his fat ass off, I guess he at least showed some Alpha-ness and did himself some small amount of good. Though we'll see how he's standing after his Gigantic Lies about his past support for Planned Parenthood, Sonia Sotormayor, and gun control get fact checked.

There is no point discussing anyone else. They're not even worth bringing up for humor value any longer, or Just To Be Nice. They're done.

Reconsidering: If Marco Rubio's oppo dump on Christie, and Christie's dissembling in response, is enough to badly damage Christie in the coming days -- then Christie is removed as another car in the Establishment Lane, and Rubio, presumably, gains most of that support.

Therefore, depending on how the post-debate conversation goes, and how much the media (and how much the right's alternative media) wants to talk about Christie Problem, this debate could turn out to be an important tactical victory for Rubio. Not winning the war, but taking a key hill.

Should we give Christie a second look?

A person was quizzing me the other day to find out what I think of various presidential candidates. When she asked me if I like Chris Christie, I immediately said, "No!" When she asked me why, I realized that my mind had gone back to his warm embrace of Obama as they walked on the beach in the aftermath of the hurricane that hit New Jersey. Not waiting for me to answer, she blurted out, "He did work closely with Obama to get help for hurricane survivors, but I can understand that he just wanted to help his people."

She had a point! I promised her I would give Christie a second look. In that spirit I came across this article in Red State by cantenucci04:

I know most conservatives hate Christie’s guts, but as this campaign goes on I’m starting to like him more. I never really hated him to begin with. So I’m just curious, why do my fellow conservatives hate him so much. Give reasons other than the “hug”, which wasn’t really a hug. I’m aware of his record and some of the things he’s done as governor of NJ that aren’t the most conservative, but I wanna hear from others why they would never vote for him.

Personally, I cut him some slack because he can’t just do whatever he wants since he has both houses controlled by democrats and has to compromise at least a little if he ever wanted to get anything in his own agenda passed. In that regard he has something in common with Reagan, who as governor of California had to work with a democrat legislature and did things like expand Medicaid and enact strict environment laws.

I also think Christie would destroy Hillary in a debate, he’s already proven he’s a great debater and has a commanding stage presence. He has the necessary governing experience to know how to get things done too. He might not be as conservative as some of the other candidates, but they haven’t had to work with people who oppose them every step of the way. They haven’t been tested. Outsiders like Trump and Fiorina can and do talk a good game, but their past statements and positions tell a different story. They’ve been all over the map on many different issues, and now that they’re running for the GOP nomination, they’re telling conservatives what they wanna hear.

Read more here.

Marijuana addiction

h/t American Digest

Keeping it secret

How much does Chris Christie's presidential candidacy cost New Jersey taxpayers? At least $1,000,000, according to Watchdog New Jersey.

Chris Christie offers to eat the debt

Once again, Manhattan Infidel has the scoop here and excerpts from Christie's 2017 Inaugural Address.

Stop Chris Christie Now

Tom Tancredo is a controversial man. When he was in Congress he was known for his outspoken disapproval of illegal immigration, an issue that many Americans have now apparently come to agree with him on. He also spoke out against the threat of Islamic jihad. Later, he ran for governor in Colorado as a representative of something called the Conservative Party, after Republicans nominated a man who had no chance to win. That infuriated many Republicans in Colorado, who have not forgiven him.

One of the things Tancredo did was to come out strongly for Amendment 64, the bill legalizing marijuana in Colorado. He did it because he is for individual liberty. He is against the nanny state, whereby government leaders try to control individual freedoms. I voted against Amendment 64, and would do so again, because I believe drug dealers do not care about the danger to children of the widespread availability of edible marijuana that looks like candy.

Nevertheless, I respect Tancredo. His latest endeavor is to form a PAC called Stop Chris Christie Now.org. I agree with him that Chris Christie is a bully. Here is a recent video showing him bullying a man who wants him to help families that lost their homes in Hurricane Sandy.

Here is the man Christie was bullying in the video above.

Morris doubtful Christie can survive controversies

Dick Morris is doubtful that Chris Christie can win the Republican nomination. Morris gives three reasons. First is the fact that Christie's warm embrace of Obama during Hurricane Sandy tipped the scales with the 15% of voters who decided in the last 72 hours of the 2012 election who they were going to vote for. Of those who were undecided before the last 72 hours before Election Day, they broke 3 to 1 in favor of Obama in those final hours.

Second, the Bridgegate controversy raised other doubts about Christie, because of bullying and perhaps using traffic on the bridge to punish his political opponents. Third, Christie appointed a long-time friend to head the Port Authority. The New York Times has done investigative reporting, and others are following up with more investigations to see if the guy Christie appointed illegally profited from contracts awarded during his tenure.

Morris does not think Christie can survive the bad publicity from these three issues and become the Republican nominee. View his brief video here.

When I'm gone...That's when it's gonna happen!

I am not gonna be the governor who's gonna tell our children that marijuana use is okay, because it's not!


While I like what Christie is saying in this video, I am reminded of what my blogging friend at Fuzzy Logic had to say about Christie three months ago:

Principles matter to me, and I will not stand by someone whom I deem to be unworthy of my support. And Chris Christie embodies everything that I cannot stand about Obama: he uses his power to “punish his enemies,” he’s petty, spiteful, mean-spirited, nasty, and thin-skinned. There is nothing admirable about Christie, nothing. And for those who think his firing and “holding accountable” his staff members is laudable, let me just remind you that they did not “go rogue” any more than the IRS agents did under Obama. They’re merely new bumps under the heartless, egocentric Christie’s bus. Bumps that will pile up just as surely as they did under Obama’s bus . . . or perhaps to be redistributed in his administration.