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Any possible future that Christie had as a national figure in the Republican Party was over the minute Romney opted take take Ryan for VP. Christie knew that and decided to stab Romney in the back. That decision did hurt us: pre-polls and exit polls verified that fact.

Even so, no; it's not all on Christie. This election should not have been close.

We have to come to terms with this fact: we have lost the ideological battle. America is simply not a right-of-center country anymore. That has been a long time in coming, but it is now unmistakably upon us. When a President says that he "saved" a company by stealing $80bn+ dollars from taxpayers, screwed the bondholders, screwed the shareholders, screwed all of the non-union employees, and since taking that money has moved almost all of its new manufacturing to Mexico and China and the people in -- OF ALL PLACES, OHIO -- actually accept that story, we have a LOT of work to do.

We are swimming in an ocean of ideological filth, mathematical innumeeracy, and economic lunacy. And out stsandard bearers are not the ones with the primary responsibility of cleaning up the waters.

I agree with most of your post, but your take on the Christie-Romney dynamic is 100% incorrect. Christie was never a serious candidate for the VP spot, and he knows this better than anyone. There's simply no way in hell he's ever going to be a serious candidate for a national post like that as long as he's a fat slob who can't even walk 150 feet without crapping out (people I know who saw him up close during the post-hurricane flurry of activity in New Jersey were actually startled and alarmed by this). I'll say it again: He knows this better than anyone.

He won in New Jersey because he's a no-nonsense straight-talker who was a breath of fresh air after the last two @ssholes in that position, but his shtick simply won't play well anywhere west of the Delaware River and he wouldn't have brought anything (including his own state) to the Republican ticket in 2012.