Politik Ditto: Chris Christie

Showing posts with label Chris Christie. Show all posts

Sunday, January 25, 2015

Chris Christie Speech @ Iowa Freedom Summit

Friday, January 9, 2015

Mitt Romney Tells Donors He’s Actively Considering Running Again

Some children want to be cowboys, astronauts, or pro athletes. I wanted to be conservative America’s premiere “Romney 2016?” trollblogger.

Live your dreams, my friends.

It may not be only the right flank of the Republican party that’s crowded in 2016. Mitt Romney is more open to a third presidential bid than ever before, according to friends and top donors of the former Massachusetts governor, which means there might be a bloody battle on the establishment side of the field as well.

“The governor is preserving his options — that’s the message I’ve gotten from Boston,” says Robert O’Brien, a Los Angeles lawyer who served as a foreign-policy adviser on Romney’s 2012 campaign. When I spoke with O’Brien in December, he told me that Romney was not considering a 2016 run but that “circumstances could change.”

In Romney world, the thinking about a 2016 bid has ratcheted up, and his top donors, most of whom remain quite loyal, have gotten the signal. O’Brien tells me that the shift in his own language reflects what he’s hearing from Romney and his team in Boston, which right now consists only of Spencer Zwick, who served as finance director on both of Romney’s presidential campaigns, and Zwick’s deputy, Matt Waldrip. Both Zwick and Waldrip work with Romney’s eldest son, Tagg, at the Boston-based private-equity firm Solamere Capital. O’Brien has spoken with a number of key donors who have relayed their hope the governor will run; they are sending him the message, either directly or through former staffers, that they want him in the race.
It’s not gonna happen. Even if, against all odds, Christie sobers up from his football-induced euphoria and realizes that he’s going nowhere in the primaries, especially now that Bush is in the race, there’s no way Romney will get in and risk splitting the establishment/centrist vote with Jeb. For him to do it, you’d need first to eliminate that risk by having the entire right side of the field implode — Rubio falters because of amnesty, Rand Paul falters because of foreign policy, Cruz falters because of his role in the shutdown, etc etc etc. Even then, someone like Jindal or Walker would probably pick up the disaffected conservative votes, not Jeb. Why would Romney sabotage a fellow establishmentarian like Bush and risk handing the nomination to a more right-wing candidate like Jindal or Walker by jumping in at that point and dividing the center? Even if every candidate on the right faded and Jeb raced out to an enormous, seemingly prohibitive lead, paint me a picture where the donor class would encourage Romney to disrupt Bush’s momentum by joining the race himself. The people who bankrolled Mitt three years ago and who’ll be bankrolling Jeb now may have mild preferences for one or the other of them, but ultimately they don’t much care which gets the nomination so long as a conservative doesn’t. Give me a scenario in which that calculus changes and suddenly there’s support in the monied center of the party for the idea that Jeb Bush himself must be stopped and there’s only one man to do it.

It’s not happening. But Bush, prudently, is taking no chances. Even before I encountered the phrase in the excerpt below, my thought upon reading the opening was “shock and awe.”

Jeb Bush’s allies are setting a fundraising goal of $100 million in the first three months of this year—including a whopping $25 million haul in Florida—in an effort to winnow the potential Republican presidential primary field with an audacious display of financial strength.

Thursday, January 8, 2015

Nate Silver: Chris Christie Is Too Moderate To Win GOP Nomination

Townhall.com:

For all you Christie detractors, you will probably enjoy the news from pollster/data cruncher Nate Silver, who suggested that the New Jersey Republican is too moderate to win the GOP nomination. Jeb Bush is more conservative than Christie, and Silver is skeptical that Mr. Christie could be successful in the invisible primary; “a tumultuous time of speechmaking, fundraising, coalition-building and constant travel, as they seek to boost their name recognition, stand out from the field, and secure the GOP nomination once the voting begins,” according to the Columbia Journalism Review.

Which GOP Candidate is right for you? Take the quiz!
With other big names, like Rick Perry, Scott Walker, and Jeb Bush mulling presidential runs of their own, it seems hard for Christie to stand out. He survived the insanely ludicrous media circus over the so-called “bridgegate,” but his national approval ratings have dipped; he’s pretty much where every other possible GOP candidate is in the polls concerning a theoretical head-to-head match-up with Clinton.

While Silver mentions that Christie isn’t totally damaged goods, he also noted that the governor’s dip in his favorability ratings undercuts the electability narrative he could use to sell to voters, who might otherwise reject him for his moderate stripes (via FiveThirtyEight):

Christie, however, ranks to the left of Bush by the statistical systems that measure candidate ideology.

Indeed, Christie takes moderate positions on the very issues where Bush notoriously deviates from the party base — such as immigration and education — along with others where Bush lands in the GOP mainstream, like on gun control. (Christie has a C grade from the National Rifle Association.) Any voter who opposes Bush for ideological reasons probably won’t find a lot to like in Christie either.

He probably lacks the discipline to win the “invisible primary.” The candidates who survive the early stage of the invisible primary tend to be those who avoid making news when they don’t need to. Donors and other influential Republicans won’t want to nominate a candidate who will risk blowing a general election because of a gaffe or scandal that hits at the wrong time.

Christie’s transgressions against Republican orthodoxy and tendency to make the wrong kind of news can amplify one another. If Christie were seen as a staunch conservative, Republicans might be more inclined to rally around him and critique the “liberal media” for persecuting him. But Christie has not always been a team player for the GOP. His speech at the 2012 Republican National Convention seemed to go out of its way to avoid praising Romney. And Christie’s embrace of President Obama as the two toured seaside communities hit hard by Hurricane Sandy in 2012 also rankled many in the GOP.

Wednesday, June 25, 2014

Surprise: New York Times Covers Christie Bridge Rehash, Not IRS Scandal, on Front Page

Townhall.com:

Last week, America's self-proclaimed "paper of record" saw fit to run an A1 story on the Scott Walker smear heard 'round the media -- which we pilloried as one of the worst episodes of laziness, bias and journalistic malpractice in recent memory. (The Wall Street Journal's scathing editorial on the subject was also excellent). Today, the New York Times' front page was bereft of any IRS coverage, despite yesterday evening's contentious Congressional hearing. Noah Rothman grabbed screenshots of both the Gray Lady's print and online versions this morning. Lois Lerner's missing emails and IRS Commissioner John Koskonin's evasions were no where to be found:

We'll return to the IRS matter in a moment, but first, a quick detour. The Times included an above-the-fold article about another bridge-related controversy "said to be linked" to Chris Christie. The story summarizes a mind-numbingly boring dispute over Christie's 2011 maneuvering to divert funds originally earmarked for a canceled Port Authority tunnel project to fix an aging bridge instead. The heart of this red hot story is whether the bridge repairs were technically within the Port Authority's purview. The Christie administration says the deal was reviewed and approved by attorneys on all sides of the deal, and a left-wing magazine reported that New York's Democratic Governor, Andrew Cuomo, also signed off on the agreement. The Nation's story was published in...early April. The Bergen Record first had the story in March. In fact, the Times itself printed a story about the SEC investigating the bipartisan transportation pact two weeks ago. Today's article, therefore, is little more than a re-run, with the only obvious hook being Chris Christie and the word "bridge." In the Times' pristine news judgment, this non-update to an abstruse transit funding flap merited front page amplification. An investigation into the federal government's most punitive agency's ritual and deliberate targeting of Americans for their political beliefs -- and the intensifying brouhaha over the suspicious disappearance of revelant evidence -- received nary a mention.

Thursday, May 15, 2014

Poll: 67 Percent Support Creation of Benghazi Special Committee

Townhall.com:

The White House derides continued questions about the Benghazi attacks "conspiracy theories" driven by "delusional" partisans. Harry Reid calls the new commission chaired by Rep. Trey Gowdy a distraction cooked up to protect the Koch Brothers' interests. Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC) has compared the coming proceedings to a lynching. NBC journalist Chuck Todd sniffs that "all" relevant questions have already been answered. The American people have a decidedly different perspective, according to a new Fox News poll:

Fully two-thirds of the public endorses the propriety and necessity of forming this select committee, which all but seven House Democrats opposed. Fewer than 30 percent have embraced the official White House line on the matter -- and by a 16-point margin, Americans say the Obama administration's general goal has been to deceive, rather than elucidate the truth, regarding Benghazi. Now, it's not as if voters view Republicans as crusading champions for truth in this scenario. Asked whether the GOP was pursuing the select committee to get to the bottom of what happened or to score political points, respondents broke for the latter option by more than a 2-to-1 margin. They nevertheless overwhelmingly back the probe. More numbers lay bare the depth of the public's cynicism over this entire episode: A majority (51/39) believes Obama's team "knowingly lied" about the cause of the attack to boost the president's re-election bid, and a similarly-sized majority (50/40) says Hillary Clinton has been deceitful about the raid.

Seventy-two percent of respondents believe the Obama administration bears at least some responsibility for what happened, with another super-majority (68/27) blaming the administration for the fact that nobody has been brought to justice for the assassinations. Democrats have been agonizing over whether to boycott the panel, or to assign members to it. I've warned that a boycott wouldn't just been a dereliction on principle -- it would be a political liability, too. This poll reaffirms that public opinion does not align with the Left's instincts to walk away from Benghazi. Not by a long shot.