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New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie told an Ocean City, Md., town hall Thursday that he was considering running for president in 2016. “I’m thinking about it,” Christie said in response to a question from a local supporter, according to The Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J. “It is an enormous decision to make not only for me, but my family,” Christie said, according to the newspaper, saying he would make his decision “probably by the end of this year or the beginning of next.” …

[...] But new polls indicate that his longtime major political weakness has not gone away: Republicans do not entirely trust him, seeing him as a liberal Northeasterner in an increasingly conservative party. Meanwhile, Christie remains the Democrats’ favorite possible GOP candidate. That could help him in a general election. However, he has to win over Republicans to win primaries before he could reach the mountain of a November vote. A Gallup survey out Friday has numbers that show what we mean. In the crowded field of possible Republican presidential candidates, from Mike Huckabee to Rick Santorum to Scott Walker, Christie...

Courting powerful Jewish donors for the second time in two months, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie called Sunday for a more aggressive foreign policy that defends American values abroad — even in "in some very messy, difficult places." "The rest of the world watches in desperation and hope that America will realize and act upon once again its indispensable place in the world," Christie, a prospective Republican presidential contender, said in a keynote address Sunday at the Champions of Jewish Values International awards gala in New York. "We must lead." He charged that America must represent the strongest military and...

He knew. The liberal New York Times reported today that Governor Chris Christie knew about the lane closings on the George Washington Bridge when they were happening. The New York Times reported: The former Port Authority official who personally oversaw the lane closings on the George Washington Bridge in the scandal now swirling around Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey said on Friday that the governor knew about the lane closings when they were happening. In a letter released by his lawyer, the official, David Wildstein, a high school friend of Mr. Christie’s who was appointed with the governor’s blessing...

January 15-19, 2014 833 Republicans +/-3.4% Rand Paul: 13% Paul Ryan: 13% Chris Christie: 12% Jeb Bush: 11% Ted Cruz: 9% Marco Rubio: 8% Scott Walker: 6% Bobby Jindal: 3% John Kasich: 2%

The Republican Party put all of their 2016 eggs in the Christie basket. Now the basket has George Washington Bridge size hole, Hillary Clinton has opened up an 8 point lead and Republicans are panicking. The first whiff of GOP panic came from a recent New York Times story, Of all the new realities that Mr. Christie must confront, perhaps the most humbling is a sense of losing the momentum that surrounded him just a few months ago. Last year, the governor’s staff had begun building up his foreign policy bona fides, quietly reaching out to Brian H. Hook, a...

Scandals? What scandals? Despite facing a pair of controversies worthy of having the word "gate" attached to them, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie remains one of the odds-on favorites to win the 2016 Republican presidential nomination. According to Oddschecker.com, a British website that tracks online bookmakers, Christie and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio are both 5-to-1 favorites to win the GOP nomination, according to one bookmaker. Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul (9 to 1) and Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan (12 to 1) are less favored, while Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (33 to 1) is a popular long shot.

Obama said the same thing about the IRS targeting tea partiers, of course. To which conservatives replied: That’s no excuse. Even if he didn’t order the targeting, bad behavior coordinated by multiple subordinates typically doesn’t happen unless they have reason to believe it’ll be tolerated up the chain. Usually, when they play dirty, they’re taking some sort of cue from their boss to do so, whether in broad ideological terms or direct marching orders.

Gov. Chris Christie’s load of bull: Fired aide Bridget Kelly merely a patsy in attempt to shelter Port Authority cronies, himself What did the governor know about the George Washington Bridge lane closures, and when did he know it? Ex-Port Authority executive David Wildstein pleaded the Fifth Wednesday, so we wait until an independent investigation can reveal the whole story. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s one-hour-and-forty-seven-minute self-serving, self-pitying display of contrition on Thursday was a climactic act in a brazen cover-up that threatens to further unravel his political career. Ever so thoroughly the governor scoured the thesaurus for words of...

House Speaker John Boehner says he believes Chris Christie remains a serious contender for the Republican 2016 presidential nomination, despite the traffic jam scandal engulfing the New Jersey governor. Reporters asked Boehner about Christie's problems on Thursday, even as the governor was holding a news conference in Trenton, N.J.

Neighbors described the 91-year-old Fort Lee woman who lay unconscious as lane closures at the George Washington Bridge delayed first responders from attending to her as a private, as a religious person. A letter from the borough's EMS coordinator to the mayor said, in at least four instances, that emergency officials were snarled by traffic in responding to calls, including to one on Harvard Place involving an elderly woman who later died. The letter from EMS coordinator Paul Favia, to Mayor Mark Sokolich, said the call involving the elderly woman, who was in cardiac arrest, came in at 8:43 a.m....

A political retaliation scandal that erupted around Republican New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie on Wednesday may be about to get worse. In September, according to a report from the Bergen Record, paramedics trying to reach an unconscious 91-year-old woman in Fort Lee, N.J., got stuck in a traffic jam that had apparently been created by Christie's associates as political punishment for the borough's mayor, a Democrat. Multiple lanes were forced to merge into one, gridlocking traffic for days. The woman later died at a hospital of cardiac arrest, according to a Sept. 10 letter that EMS coordinator Paul Favia sent...

The U.S. Attorney in New Jersey will probe the scandal surrounding the lane closures on the George Washington Bridge, a scandal that has engulfed Gov. Chris Christie, the New York Times is reporting. Christie, a possible Republican White House candidate, is holding a news conference at his office in the state capital of Trenton this morning. The controversy erupted with the public release of incriminating emails showing that a top Christie aide played a key role in closing some lanes to the bridge, in a ploy to punish the Democratic mayor of Fort Lee, New Jersey, who didn't endorse Christie...

The next 24 hours will be crucial for Chris Christie, top Republicans say. The New Jersey governor, who was on top of the political world two months ago as he cruised to reelection over his Democratic challenger now finds his status as the potential front-runner of the 2016 GOP presidential field imperiled. The test comes with the release of e-mails and text messages that tie top members of his administration to the closure of two lanes leading to a crucial bridge in what appears to be political retaliation against a Democratic mayor who refused to endorse Christie’s reelection. Republican communications...

In the best possible light, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie built a top staff of lying thugs who threatened lives and safety to serve his political ends. If not, Christie is a lying thug himself. Emails and text messages among his close aides made public Wednesday documented that in September they gleefully engineered George Washington Bridge lane closures to punish the Democratic mayor of Fort Lee for failing to endorse their boss’ reelection. Local officials say the gridlock they caused delayed ambulances in responding to four calls, including one involving an unconscious 91-year-old woman who later died.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) is the rare politician who is both spontaneous and interactive with the media. There is no Obama-style idolatry by the media, but he does entertain them. -snip- Christie might not get a break from the media in the 2016 campaign, but he will earn a disproportionate share of the coverage simply because he is the front-runner and he is amusing. Given the right-wing media’s antipathy toward a popular governor with a record of accomplishment and an emphasis on bipartisanship, he may wind up getting more favorable treatment in the mainstream press than among the...

WASHINGTON -- They are at it again. They are again telling Republicans and conservatives how dreadful their political condition really is. I am speaking, of course, of the voices of the Kultursmog, and to hear them tell it we are in a hell of a heap. We lost the governorship of Virginia. Even worse, we won the governorship of New Jersey. What dreadful news. Of course, in Virginia the Republicans lost to a congenital liar, backed by the most famous congenital liars in American politics, the Clintons. It is only a matter of time before he is in deep do-do....

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, brother and son of the former presidents Bush, is considering a run for president, but only if Gov. Chris Christie fails to gain nationwide traction, Politico reports this morning.

A poll published Wednesday by Quinnipiac finds that in a theoretical 2016 match-up between Governor Chris Christie and former Secretary Hillary Clinton, Christie would have a slight edge. The poll of American voters showed Christie garnering 43 percent while Clinton received 42 percent. Christie was the only Republican who beat Clinton in potential head to head race. Other possible Republican nominees trailed Clinton by between 9 and 15 points: • 49 - 40 percent over U.S. Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky; • 51 - 36 percent over U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas; • 49 - 40 percent over U.S....

Those sophisticates at Time magazine made a funny. They put Chris Christie on their cover with the headline, "The Elephant in the Room." Get it? Elephant. Christie. Time magazine did a junior high fat joke right there on its cover. Time's executive editor Michael Duffy explained the cheap shot this way: "Well, he's obviously a big guy. He's obviously a big Republican. But he's also done a really huge thing here this week." The "huge thing" wasn't only winning re-election as New Jersey's governor, but doing it by appealing to a broad range of voters in a very blue state...