New Jersey governor Chris Christie clearly has ambitions to run for the presidency in 2016. It is also clear that he is pushing the ‘maverick’ shtick that worked for John McCain, at least as far as getting the Republican nomination was concerned, and to aim for the support of the party establishment, territory that is open since all the other putative candidates (Rand Paul, Ted Crux, Rick Santorum, Marco Rubio, Paul Ryan, Rick Perry) seem to be angling for the Tea Party wing’s support. He clearly wants to be portrayed as the straight-talking, no-nonsense, get-stuff-done, not-totally-nuts kind of guy.
But a new book on the 2012 presidential race, one of those post-election insider gossip fests so beloved by the Washington beltway class, could prove highly damaging to his chances. In the chapter about Mitt Romney’s search for a running mate, a process dubbed Project Goldfish, the authors dwell on the vetting of Christie and the damaging information that was found in terms of his personality, temperament, health, habits, past actions, and ethics.
Ted Newton, managing Project Goldfish under [Beth] Myers, had come into the vet liking Christie for his brashness and straight talk. Now, surveying the sum and substance of what the team was finding, Newton told his colleagues, If Christie had been in the nomination fight against us, we would have destroyed him—he wouldn’t be able to run for governor again. When you look below the surface, Newton said, it’s not pretty.
If the Romney camp felt that they could destroy Christie, then it seems unlikely that he could survive against the Tea Party gang. All Christie’s negatives are still there and may make the party establishment wary about putting their support behind such a risky choice and if Christie does not get their full backing, he has no chance.
Christie might well also suffer the John Huntsman problem.
He was the only sane candidate the GOP had in the 2012 election primaries.
And came in…last.
They were so desperate the christofascists ended up nominating a non-xian Reptilian human hybrid.
I never read these sorts of things. This one was pretty entertaining.
Probably didn’t stop the NSA.
Not exactly Enigma, is it.
I hope no comment is necessary.
Punctuality mattered to Romney. Christie’s lateness bugged him. Mitt also cared about fitness and was prone to poke fun at those who didn’t. (“Oh, there’s your date for tonight,” he would say to male members of his traveling crew when they spied a chunky lady on the street.) Romney marveled at Christie’s girth, his difficulties in making his way down the narrow aisle of the campaign bus. Watching a video of Christie without his suit jacket on, Romney cackled to his aides, “Guys! Look at that!”
Demonstrates what a yellow bellied, sociopathic piece of filth Rmoney is. Nothing at all like his dad who was a stand up guy.
So Romney didn’t like Christie because Christie wasn’t punctual and Christie was fat. I didn’t like Romney because he was a right wing asshole who showed his utter contempt for any American not worth a couple of million dollars. I think my dislike of Romney is more rational than his dislike of Christie.
I would take this with a Very Large grain of salt. These same clowns thought the polls were “skewed” and seem to have believed, until after the voting finished, that Rmoney would win, possibly by a landside. They showed no obvious connect to Reality, be it in voter’s intentions or much of anything else, and dismissed or ignored (or, perhaps, where so incurious they didn’t even check?) evidence to the contrary and plausible alternatives. They seemed to live in an impervious echo-chamber.
@5 blf:
You forget that the one thing that these clowns are good at is winning primaries. When it comes to sticking daggers into their own kind, the Republican Party is still king.
On the other hand, the Romney camp had quite a good attack apparatus which they used to destroy one serious challenger after another in the primaries: Cain, Gingrich, Santorum
What that book excerpt revealed about Romney as an unlikable human being just confirmed what we had already suspected, that he truly does feel special and entitled.
Oh come on Prof. Singham, Cain, Santorum, and Gingrich were serious contenders only in the imagination of the lame stream media who built up each one of them in turn to sell newspapers and TV commercials. This is what the media does, if Rmoney had sewed up the nomination early on, no story for the talking heads and editorial writers to pontificate on.
I thought Romney was a sexist, elitist pig when he ran and this doesn’t change my mind.
Unlikeable isn’t the half of it.
The only wonder is that such persons could ever have been considered “serious contenders.”
Honestly, the best thing that can happen to the Democrats for 2016 is for the GOP to move even farther right in 2014. I’m hoping we see the democrats win a few more seats in congress, though not all of them, and that as many republicans as possible get replaced by Tea Party primary challengers. Keep them contained but on display and 2016 wins itself. For best results, bait them into one more fiasco in early 2016. Obama should stand up for Social Security and try to actually keep it solvent for he next 50-100 years.
I think the Republicans could -and no doubt will -- do a lot worse than Chris Christie.
From what I gather, he’s one of the more reasonable and intelligent ones on that side of politics.
Which probably means he’s got no chance of scoring the Repub nomination although things may be changing and swinging back towards sanity and the political centre there -- they have to at some point, right?