CC: Will you please be my friend? Please?
BHO: Uh ... um ... let me get back to you on that Fat Boy. Don't call me, I'll have my people call you.
Posted on 08/15/2013 5:46:18 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Say this for the guy: He knows what his audience wants to hear.
I guess this is going to be his approach, whether or not it alienates righty votes he’ll need in the general election. Being “brash” and confrontational got him two terms as governor in a blue state. Why not let it all hang out and see if it can’t get him the White House too? Besides, with the rest of the field busy distancing themselves from Romney, there are a lot of forlorn, wealthy establishmentarians out there in need of a champion. Here he comes now:
“Christie and Paul tangled earlier this summer after the New Jersey governor criticized Paul’s libertarian-tinged worldview as “esoteric” and “intellectual,” drawing a series of pointed rebukes from Paul and his allies…
“I think we have some folks who believe that our job is to be college professors,” he said. “Now college professors are fine I guess. Being a college professor, they basically spout out ideas that nobody does anything about. For our ideas to matter we have to win. Because if we don’t win, we don’t govern. And if we don’t govern all we do is shout to the wind. And so I am going to do anything I need to do to win.”…
Christie also appeared to rap Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, another potential White House hopeful who made headlines in January when he implored the GOP to “stop being the stupid party.”
“I’m not going to be one of these people who goes around and calls our party stupid,” Christie said, a startling remark given that Jindal and Christie work hand-in-hand as chairman and vice-chairman of the Republican Governors Association.
“We need to stop navel gazing. There’s nothing wrong with our principles. We need to focus on winning again. There’s too much at stake for this to be an academic exercise. We need to win and govern with authority and courage.”
The fact that he’s picking an early fight with Jindal, someone with whom he’s had no issues but who’s a potential rival in 2016, is the best evidence yet that he really is running. “It was impressive. I forgot about the Obama bear hug,” the chairman of the Tennessee GOP told CNN afterward. And that’s the idea — if your would-be base is worried/annoyed at you for buddying up to The One, one way to win them back is to throw punches at someone else they don’t like. Ironically, he’s executing a sort of RINO version of the strategy some tea-party pols use to ingratiate themselves with supporters: He’s picking a fight with someone who’s unpopular with his constituents, it’s just that instead of Obama, the targets in this case are … fellow Republicans. No wonder Beltway GOPers love him. Maybe WaPo’s idea of Christie “standing up” to Palin in order to dazzle centrists is likelier than I thought.
I don’t get his criticisms of Paul and Jindal, though. In terms of the latter, as Philip Klein pointed out on Twitter, Christie’s said worse things about Republican leaders than calling them “stupid.” And Jindal wasn’t calling the party stupid because he thinks its principles are stupid; he said specifically that the party should retain its “values” but that it needs to stop showcasing people prone to crankish remarks and reach middle America with growth policies rather than obsessing about the deficit. I’m surprised Christie disagrees with any of that. Although, maybe he doesn’t. The point here was to take a rival down a peg, not seriously engage his ideas.
As for Paul, the so-called “college professor,” I assume that’s a reference to his filibuster over the unlikely prospect of the feds droning a U.S. citizen on American soil. That’s fine, but that’s long since been overtaken by the debate over NSA surveillance. Does Christie consider that topic fanciful or “esoteric,” even after his pal Barack has conceded that reforms are necessary? Or is he, rather, jabbing at Paul for pushing libertarian legislative initiatives like defunding O-Care or cutting foreign aid that invariably fail? That makes more sense insofar as it’s a contrast with Christie’s own brand of working with Democrats to “get things done.” That’ll be one of the under-the-radar issues of the 2016 primaries, amid all the noise about surveillance and immigration: Does the party want to nominate someone who’s campaigning explicitly on bipartisanship or someone willing to filibuster, for 13 hours straight if need be, to extract concessions from the other side? Christie’s carving out his turf early.
Exit quotation from Rand Paul: “I think that the Republican party is big enough for the both of us.” Is it?
Update: Counterpunch.
“So if I translate Gov. Christie correctly, we shouldn’t be the party of ideas,” Paul adviser Doug Stafford told CNN in an email. “We shouldn’t care what we stand for or even if we stand for anything. We reject that idea. Content-free so-called ‘pragmatism’ is the problem, not the solution.”
That’s why I haven’t been a Republican for 20 years!
“And so I am going to do anything I need to do to win.”…
That’s all I needed to know. Folks who spout such dangerous notions are to be shunned. Like Obama.
Piyush “Bobby” Jindal is nothing more than a Hindu
anchor baby version og Huey Long, with the blessings
of his old boss, the now-ex-con-former-governor
Edwin Edwards.
If FatBoy Christie wants him for a rear,(ahem),
avoidance bumper, he has got him.
Christie rates my choice for 2016, as much as that Keating Five
Thief, and still senator, John “the Vietnamese
got my brain”, McCain.
Hitlery will be given the slot... the votes have already been printed and counted...
Not yet it hasn't. He's up for re-election in November.
Welfare Republican Chris Christie prepares to run for the Office of Re-Distribution Welfare at ‘The Big White House’ at 1600 Plantation Avenue in the Nation’s District of Corruption.
I think people are entitled to admit that they were wrong.
&&&
Or to realize that their book sales are tanking because of what they have said/written?
Coulter is dead to me.
A Missouri rodeo clown dressed up as Chris Christie, but he was too *ahem* “large” to escape the bull. Sad story...
“Oink!”
Caption the pic in post #32 (the passionate handshake).
‘Rats continue to circle the wagons to defend even a lying thug like Obama, while ‘pubs continue to eat their young, as former Senator Simpson once put it.....
Ann Coulter: Chris Christie’s Dead to Me
I think people are entitled to admit that they were wrong.
"Make sure you never get me in a fine kettle of fish, Ollie....or else."
CC: Will you please be my friend? Please?
BHO: Uh ... um ... let me get back to you on that Fat Boy. Don't call me, I'll have my people call you.
Now, he's gone full bore to the dark side, yet if we underestimate his capacity to persuade, we'll end up with him as the nominee.
The guy needs to be carefully taken out, he's worse than Romney.
I do remember that. And there were several other Governors taking up the same battle at the same time - Walker being the best. It seems so long ago and that only Walker in Wisconsin saw it through.
Any Governor who does not fight to take away the benefits of the public sector 'desk job' unions (police & fire can keep theirs as 'battle pay'), is overseeing an unsustainable budget. The entire concept of public unions and pensions(?!) is ludicrous. Unless done away with, like has already been done in the corporate world, states are on the path to bankruptcy.
Caption photo in # 32....
“Make sure you never get me in a fine kettle of fish, Ollie....or else.”
//////////
Good one!
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