Liberals should fear Chris Christie:The GOP all-star is far from a moderate - By Don Hazen

[Douglas Carpenter]

The GOP all-star is far from a moderate -- he's a social progressive's worst nightmare

By Don Hazen


Credit: (AP Photo/Mel Evans))

This article originally appeared on AlterNet republished on salon.com.


But Christie isn’t just hostile to working-class organizations. He has an all-encompassing right-wing philosophy that seeps into every aspect of his agenda. No matter the issue – minimum wage, marriage equality, climate change, directing public money to private corporations, lowering taxes on the rich – Chris Christie is a hard-right Republican. He may be a huge fan of Bruce Springsteen, but I can guarantee that Springsteen is not a fan of his.

Meanwhile, he did raise taxes on one group: the working poor. Christie cut the Earned Income Tax Credit, a program with a long record of bipartisan support that puts more cash in the pockets of struggling families. And just for good measure, Christie also vetoed a modest $1.25/hr. increase in the minimum wage.

Christie’s blind faith in trickle-down economics has left New Jersey with the seventh-highest unemployment rate in the country (9.3 percent). Yet Christie single-handedly killed the biggest public infrastructure project in the country. The ARC tunnel would have connected New Jersey to New York and created 45,000 permanent jobs, but Christie blocked the project. He’s like one of those moronic Republican governors who turned down high-speed rail money from the Federal Stimulus Act in Florida or, you guessed it, Wisconsin.

He’s also endangering New Jersey’s reputation as a state that cares about education. In his first year in office he cut $1.2 billion in state aid to public schools. The cuts were so deep that the state Supreme Court found they violated students’ rights. As a candidate, Chris Christie pledged to increase funding for higher education. But then he was elected. And he turned around and cut higher education funding 15 percent, all the while referring to the leaders of the state’s teachers’ union as a “group of political thugs” for opposing these policies.

Christie’s record speaks for itself, and his kind words for Scott Walker should erase any doubt: Christie is no moderate. His worldview should be anathema to progressives everywhere. He’s also dangerous, because he’s popular and is a strong contender for the Republican nomination in 2016. A landslide victory in 2013 will be a launching pad for his 2016 race — “I won a bipartisan landslide in a blue Northeastern state (one that Barack Obama won by 18 points and Bob Menendez won by 20 points), I tamed the unions, and I can make a conservative message work everywhere from New Jersey to New Mexico.” Being able to point to labor support will only bolster his case.

http://www.salon.com/2013/04/09/liberals_should_be_scared_of_chris_christie_partner/

[Walk away]

1. DU seems to love Chris Christie.

I was once accused of being a troll here because I disagreed with a long time DUer and her pro-Christie posts. You can find endless anti-Hillary threads, but god forbid you call someone out for promoting a teabagger republican on a Democratic web site.

[LeftofObama]

2. I would wipe my a$$ with the ballot before I would vote for christie.

Sure he worked hard during/after Sandy, what governor who wants to keep his job wouldn't? As for being president, he isn't fit to tie a Democrat's shoes!

[Douglas Carpenter]

7. we are at a stage where any Republican who is not an intractable DUMBASS like Rick Perry or Rick

Santorum or Paul Ryan or an out-of-touch Thurston Howell III character like Mitt Romney - and if they can show some BASIC public manners and hold a conversation on TV that wouldn't make Americans look decadent and stupid in the eyes of the world - we think we have FINALLY found the one last remaining nice Republican - Someone with whom we may disagree - but is reasonable. We all would like to believe that there is at least one out there somewhere. AT one time, long, long ago most of us thought John McCain was one of those. Time proved us wrong. So someone like Chris Christie shows up and refuses to politicize a hurricane at the exact moment it is hitting the New Jersey shores and someone who also thinks it best to cooperate with the federal government when half of his state is buried under water - - We think we have finally found a responsible and reasonable Republican. We would ALL like to believe that there is at least ONE left.

[Walk away]

19. What you don't seem to get is that he DID politicize the hurricane.

We are a Blue State. He kissed Obama's ass for Democratic votes. He already has the pukes.

[dembotoz]

3. he would be very hard to beat

scares me to death

[customerserviceguy]

9. Don't worry

He will never, ever get nominated. After the sloppy wet kiss he gave Obama during the Hurricane Sandy photo-ops, the GOP would never nominate him. Hell, he's twice as abrasive as Giulliani, and you see how far that asshat got in the Rethuglican primaries.

[Douglas Carpenter]

11. I think you are probably right..but given the self-reflection about strategy (not policy) going on

in Republican ranks - it can't be ruled out. Although - if we think back to only a couple elections ago - John McCain was considered to be the decent Republican who was moderate, bipartisan and reasonable - Even lots of Democrats genuinely liked him so much that many did support trying to recruit him to run with John Kerry in 2004 And to some extent the claim of moderate, reasonable and bipartisan was attached to Romney as well. In both cases they were forced to sound right-wing, ignorant and unreasonable in order to win the support of their party's base. Will the GOP recognize that if they want to win - they need someone like Chris Christie - but if they really want to win they can't force more broadly appealing nominee to sound like a right wing nut if they want him to win more than just the nomination? Or will the party's base which is still dominated by ignoramuses and lunatics, say to themselves, " We ran liberals the last two times - because everyone said they could win - but we lost. We will win only when we run a real conservative." My guess is that they will probably go for the later. But I can't say. I would be certain of that. Fox News and right-wing radio which are the real vanguards of the Grand Old Party are certainly not changing their tune - yet anyway.

[customerserviceguy]

13. John McCain got to be nominee because of his wartime service

It was a way for GOP voters to feel that they were contrasting themselves from their image of Democratic voters, who they imagine spitting at Vietnam war veterans. Christie doesn't have any of that going for him.

His attitude is taken in stride by NJ folks, who aren't as easily offended as religious whackjobs in Kansas. He won't do any better that Giulliani did in Florida, and that is with Northeastern transplants making up the base of the Repuke party in that state.

You know who I fear? Rand Paul.

[Douglas Carpenter]

14. I don't fear rand paul much because his foreign policy views would be anathema to the party of war

The GOP is still overwhelming the party of trigger happy hawks. Rand Paul - although not as anti-interventionist as his father - he is still more of any anti-interventionist than most mainstream Democrats to say nothing of the saber rattling - blood lusting base of the Republican Party as well as virtually their entire establishment. Over the last two election cycles -every candidate for the GOP nomination that even ran a credible campaign - every single won - had hardline neoconservatives as their only foreign policy advisors. Not even one old style James Baker type foreign policy realist was on the staff of any of them. I think if Rand Paul were to win the nomination- most of the GOP establishment would walk away.

“When people come to me and they’re lobbying for ratcheting up some bellicose policy –- even if it’s a bad country — I tell them: When I read the New Testament, and when I read about Jesus, he wasn’t really involved in the war of his days,” the senator continued. “In fact, people rebuked him for not being the king they wanted; they wanted somebody to stand up to the Romans.”

Comments like these are likely to further irritate the war-hawkish elements of the Republican Party, such as Weekly Standard founder Kristol who called the senator a “dangerous” “neo-isolationist,” and Fox commentator Krauthammer who dismissed Paul’s civil liberties concerns as “absurd” and ridiculous.”

In what seems like a direct criticism of some of the practices contained within American foreign policy, the senator then said that “ didn’t organize coalitions and guerrilla bands and arm them.”

He concluded: “Blessed are the peacemakers, not blessed are the warmakers.”

Hear, hear.

Watch below, via CBN:



Video:

http://www.mediaite.com/tv/rand-paul-cautions-republicans-and-some-evangelicals-often-appear-too-eager-for-war/

[customerserviceguy]

15. There are two ways he gets the nomination

Yes, he doesn't appeal to the warmongers, but Romney didn't appeal terribly much to the base of the Rethug party, either.

First, everybody else sits it out, and lets Paul coast to the nomination, confident he'll be whipped by Hillary. Christie, Jindal, Ryan, and all the rest that I can think of have plenty of time, and they might just decide that the GOP nomination is a better thing to have in 2020 rather than 2016. Second, Hillary looks vulnerable, and they all get in there, dividing the party up in the same way that Gingrich, Santorum, Perry, etc. did to let Mittens walk through the door.

Paul will have the base his father built. I worry about how he'll appeal to the undecided voter, the person who doesn't pay a ding dong damn worth of attention to politics until the weekend before the general election.

[spanone]

4. he's charismatic, that's always dangerous in a right wing politician.

[SoCalDem]

5. He's a one-trick-Clydesdale

NJ is the furthest he'll go..Republicans don't like "moderate" republicans these days.

Remember Giuliani?? He was supposed to breeze through and take on Hillary

[customerserviceguy]

10. Totally agreed

Two-term NJ governor is the best he can hope for.

[Demoiselle]

6. Every time he turns up on my tv...

...and he turns up a lot because I'm in Philadelphia....I am impressed with his appeal. And then I get very nervous. Even a Springsteen fan can be a hard right Republican. He has a kind of Everyman slick facility that can blind his audience to his real positions. I've always been impressed with the solid smarts (mostly very progressive) of New Jersey voters. I hope they don't disappoint me.

[HiPointDem]

8. i don't see it.

[Demoiselle]

12. I can appreciate your take on him.

He must remind me of someone I liked when I was an adolescent, 4 or 5 thousand years ago. Not that I can think of anybody specific!

[OldDem2012]

16. I'm surprised anyone would find this to be new information. nt.

[deutsey]

17. I never really saw him as a moderate

I have grudgingly respected some of his comments and actions during the Irene and Sandy emergencies, but I never lost sight of his ideology.

[Union Scribe]

18. Doesn't the GOP hate him

and blame him for costing Romney the election ( ) by taking a picture with Obama or some such?