Why Conservatives Aren’t Rushing To Chris Christie’s Defense

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http://www.buzzfeed.com/mckaycoppins/why-conservatives-arent-rushing-to-chris-christies-defense



Democrats aren’t the only ones indulging in schadenfreude as Chris Christie faces down the biggest political scandal of his career this week: Conservatives are taking delight in the controversy as well.

Christie has been at odds with his party’s right wing ever since the final days of the 2012 campaign, when many on the right believe he abandoned his efforts to elect Mitt Romney in pursuit of his own image as a champion of bipartisanship — embracing President Obama, often literally, in a series of widely publicized photos and interviews in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. He went on stake out decidedly centrist positions on a number of issues during his gubernatorial race, and when he won in a landslide, he lectured the rest of the GOP about why they should follow his lead.

The result has been that any goodwill that once existed between the prospective 2016 candidate and especially the Tea Party has evaporated — leading conservative activists and the right-wing blogosphere to sit back and watch gleefully as Christie’s bridge scandal unfolds.

Steve Deace@SteveDeaceShow Follow
Am I terrible person if I want to get out of the way and let the liberal media destroy Chris Christie 2016 for me?

***SNIP

RedState editor Erick Erickson wrote about the bridge scandal Wednesday in a post he headlined, “The Politics of A-Holes”:

I’m ambivalent on his run for the Presidency. But I don’t see him getting that far for the very reasons underlying this issue — he and his staff operate as divas.

I have had Congressmen, Governors, and the staffers of Congressmen and Governors tell me horror stories about dealing with Christie’s people. All of them seem to dread it…

This was always going to be Christie’s problem. People want a winner. And they want an a**hole. But they want the person to be their a**hole, not an a**hole who tries to make everyone else his whipping boy.

[Wounded Bear]

1. And therein lies their answer....

Steve Deace@SteveDeaceShow Follow
Am I terrible person if I want to get out of the way and let the liberal media destroy Chris Christie 2016 for me?

It was all "liberal media" attacks that did him in. Blah. Blah. Blah. The right will through this whole thing and Christie will be fine.

[razorman]

2. If this is Christie's political demise we are watching,

I do not think it really matters much to either side. I talk to people of various persuasions every day. My progressive clients are enjoying the whole spectacle, hoping for Christie to go down, and then becoming no threat to Dem prospects in 2016. The conservatives I have spoken to about this are enjoying it almost as much. A couple of them even told me that Christie has no chance at the R nomination anyway, so it doesn't matter. They see him as an "Obama butt-kisser", or RINO, as one told me. Basically, it seems that he is not trusted within his own party.

[TlalocW]

3. I honestly didn't think Christie had a chance to the GOP nomination to begin with

He palled around with Obama too much, and he signed a bill outlawing gay conversion therapy as well as dropped legal challenges to gay marriage in New Jersey.

There's no way he would get through the primaries.

TlalocW

[HappyMe]

5. I agree.

He didn't have a snowball's chance in hell for the nomination. He's not conservative enough.

[calimary]

4. Is it bad that I'm smiling?