New Jersey Governor Chris Christie appears to be in some real trouble.
A couple of readers have asked for my take on this, but I was pretty much content to leave it alone in favor of stories and outside projects I felt were a lot more important then some tale of petty political revenge. That was especially true since my views on Governor Christie, especially as a presidential candidate are pretty well known and have been for some time.
But that was before I found out that these antics actually resulted in someone's death.That puts this in a whole other realm.
What happened here is that one of Governor Christie's top aides ordered the closing of the George Washington Bridge as a retaliation against Fort Lee’s Democratic mayor, Mark Sokolich for not endorsing Christie in his re-election run for governor last year. That resulted in a 4 hour traffic delay, something Christie was pretty callous and disinterested about at the time.
This would have stayed hidden except that e-mails surfaced between Bridget Anne Kelly, Christie’s deputy chief of staff for legislative and intergovernmental affairs and David Wildstein, a long time Christie aide and New Jersey's Port Authority Director of Interstate Projects. check this out:
Unfortunately, the fall out wasn't just political.A woman died because of the politically motivated delays while waiting for EMS techs to get to her location through the traffic. As one of my attorney friends tells me, this is known as involuntary manslaughter and he'd be very surprised if the woman's family wasn't fielding non-stop calls from Jersey attorneys seeking to represent them in a lawsuit.
Christie originally said his office had nothing to do with the closures, something we now know was, well, pretty much one of those politically expedient falsehoods we've gotten used to in the Age of Obama.
After being caught out on that one, he was forced to talk to the media today. The new line? He apologized, but "Hey I didn't know nuthin'." He claims that he hardly ever even spoke to David Wildstein, someone he's been close friends with since high school and whom he personally appointed to the post of Port Authority Director.And now, since he's apologized, he wants us all to just move on, nothing to see here.
So, what does all this tell us about Governor Christie?
Not too much I wasn't aware of before, but this episode underlines it nicely.
For one thing, with him its all about theatrics and plausible deniability. Even if a few top aides went rogue and did this on their own (an unlikely story, but let's go with it) the governor is either guilty of gross incompetence and lousy judgement if he's telling the truth, and petty, Obama-like use of government for political revenge if he isn't and was in on this from the jump.The George Washington Bridge is not some small town two laner but a major commuter and commercial artery. A four hour closure is something that ordinarily would merit top priority from a governor, especially in a small state like New Jersey - unless it was something he okayed personally. If he didn't, than he obviously wasn't doing his job and was focused elsewhere, something we've also become accustomed to in the Age of Obama.Andthe fact that this stunt in the name of politics resulted in someone's death also strikes a familiar note..sort of a small scale version of Benghazi or Fast and Furious.
Obviously, there's are good reasons the governor and President Obama get along so well.
As I wrote elsewhere, the governor agrees with President Obama on all the major issues anyway. He's anti Second Amendment, (New Jersey has some of the most restrictive gun laws in the nation), pro amnesty for illegal migrants, pro abortion on demand, and on board for pretty much everything else that's part of Obama's agenda except the sanctity of the public employee unions. And even that was limited to a couple of famous YouTube clips. He even agrees with the president on ObamaCare, agreeing to accept Obamacare funding to expand Medicaid and reversing himself after declaring a year ago that it would be fiscally unsound.
And speaking of things fiscal, for all the rep Christie has as a fiscal conservative, New Jersey's official unemployment rate is still 8.4% (the real U-6 rate is over 10%), it's one of the highest taxed states in the country, and under Christie's stewardship, the state's debt rose by $6 billion in fiscal 2012, up 9 percent, to about $71 billion. last year ,with Moody's downgrading the state's bond outlook from stable to negative.
In other words, he's pretty much similar to Barack Obama with less of a tan and a slightly bigger resume.
In the event the GOP manages to strong arm the party's base and make him the 2016 Republican nominee, he'd be a real waste of effort - almost certainly a losing candidate because the base would stay home again, but an absolute nightmare in office if he managed to win somehow.
So if this scandal manages to end his presidential aspirations, consider that a blessing in disguise.
2 comments:
the only thing missing from that photo is monkey boy.
a lot more important then some tale of petty political revenge.
that pretty much sums up the hussein administration from the last 5 years.
this comment has been made from a promise zone.
The title of your post is very interesting and spot on. I would say the Hindenburg has definitely crashed. In fact, Mr. Christie's political career is or should be the least of his worries right now. An end to his political career would be the best thing that could happen to him.
Very likely he and his aides are looking at lengthy jail terms. Mr. Christie's future will depend upon what he knew and when he knew it. At the least, this shows gross imcompetence on his part. As such, he is not fit to manage a department in a retail store let alone be POTUS or governor of a state.
Not only is this criminal but it has to be about the dumbest action ever undertaken by anyone in leadership. 1.)Shutting down busy streets like this in retaliation for the actions of a certain mayor will not harm him politically. A mayor has no control over this. He/she can take to the airwaves criticizing state officials for the shut down and will gain political cred from this rather than be harmed. He/she is seen as standing up to the state for their constituents. 2.)When kids are going to school is among the busiest traffic time on the roads. Any 12 year old is smart enough to figure out if busy roads are shut down during peak traffic times there a virtual 100% possibility that someone will die as a result of this for the reasons the lady you mentioned died. What were they thinking? I suppose they weren't. They must have allowed ideology to blind them. 3.)They were dumb enough to coordinate this via a combination of emails and texts. This type of communication is easily tracked. As such, they had virtually no chance of actually getting away this over an extended period of time.
In summary, they've directly contributed to the death of an innocent person, the actions they took had a virtual 100% chance of leading to such an outcome, the actions they took supposedly in "retaliation" were not going to adversely affect the mayor's political prospects, and they were dumb enough to coordinate this via easily tracked emails and cell phone activity.
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