Replies

“he’s as good as you’re going to get in NJ. “

Possibly. RINOs like Christie, Whitman and Kean are loaded - BIG money. They control the NJ GOP. When a real conservative like Schundler or Lonegan comes along and runs or gets nominated, they either refuse to support him, or snow him over with money as Christie did Lonegan (See
http://americansforprosperity.org/new-jersey )

At ANY rate, I sure wish to hell that people would STOP presenting this guy as a possible Presidential Candidate in the future. He’s too liberal for America and too liberal for the National GOP, unless you want to go back to the Liberal Lite Compassionate Conservatism of the Bushes, which helped put Obama in the White House and lost control of both houses to the Dems.

You’re both right: Christie’s not a conservative and he’s as good as you’ll get statewide in NJ. Saying ‘no’ to this tunnel, asking for incredibly minor concessions from the teachers unions, and a piddling cut in state government (something like 1200 people to be laid off) is actually no great fiscal conservative in an overgrown and overtaxed state like NJ.

What Christie is good at is sounding tough and intelligent at the same time. That’s got too many people falling for him as a national leader at the moment. In my book, however, he’s not even half a Giuliani on conservative substance—and that’s not much.

My personal opinion of Governor Christie is that he wants to limit his “fights” at this time. The biggest problem in a state filled with them is the cost of government. This includes the size, salary, benefits and especially pensions for state, county and municipal employees. If he goes down the road of trying to do to many things at once his enemies will be better able to cloud the fiscal disaster issue which is the #1 problem and he risks getting nothing done. For example now is not the time for him to become Tom Tancredo on illegal immigration. A huge percentage of the state is foreign born and immigration is an issue that the left would love to have the press focus on day and night. CC would have to spend too much time defending himself on the issue.

CC is trying to address the pension bomb before it explodes. This more than anything is the biggest problem that many blue states face. This includes all public employees including cops. I know there are some on the FR board that don't want to hear this but I can assure you cops in the state of NJ are not underpaid. Most cops make well over $100k a year and that doesn't include benefits and all the OT they lard on in addition to their salary. The overwhelming majority of them work in middle and upper middle class suburbs where there is no violent crime. They are not pounding the pavement in the hood.

CC has stated that binding arbitration in contract negotiation needs to be done away with and I couldn't agree more with him. The state arbitrators rule in favor of the unions approximately 93% of the time. Even if a town wants to fight the unions they will probably lose (ie pay up) in the end.