Chris Christie Mulling a 2012 Run

I really enjoyed this posting regarding Chris Christie. I thought I'd share.

From: NICE DEB.com

Republicans are still concerned that the current field is weak, and both Rick Perry and Romney leaves them with doubts; Romney, because he’s a technocrat who doesn’t have firm convictions, and Perry, because people are not sure of his ability to articulate his views.

See Breitbart T.V. for a serious discussion of a possible Christie Run on Fox News Sunday, where Wall Street Journal editor, Paul Gigot shares some insider info on the situation.
He claims that there have enough people who have gone to him now and said, “look this field is weak, and none of them may be able to beat the president, we need a republican president, we think you can do it. Now is your moment….”

He says he’s thinking about it now, very carefully.

I’ve made the case that the fact that Christie has repeatedly and forcefully denied that he has any interest in running in 2012, is somewhat disqualifying. After all, Obama did the same thing after he was elected to the US Senate in 2004. In his case it always looked like the White House was the ultimate goal, and the denials were less than sincere. In Christie’s case, I have no doubt that when he was elected Governor of New Jersey, he had no greater aspirations than fixing the financial mess in that state. But now he can say , with the country’s bleak economic forecast, he’s been pulled into this thing almost against his will. We need someone who can fix the financial mess we’re in, and he’s the man to do it.

Jennifer Rubin also making the case for Christie, points to a recent speech he made at the American Enterprise Institute where he made the case for entitlement reform:

And here’s the thing about that speech at AEI: He didn’t use a teleprompter. Sitting in the audience about five or six rows back, I didn’t see a written speech. On either side of me were mainstream reporters who were entirely transfixed. His humor is dry, he treats the audience like adults and he’s refusing to parrot the usual blather that pols dole out to a cynical press corps. That room had wonks and Tea Party advocates. It had conservative and mainstream media. And to a person, the reaction to that performance was “Wow.”

Let’s consider for a moment Christie in the GOP debate. Can you imagine what he’d say about Perry’s backpedaling on Social Security? Could you imagine him letting Rep. Ron Paul (R-Tex.) get away with nonsense about America bringing 9/11 on itself? Ooof. I imagine he’d brush off Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) with a shake of the head and a sly remark. (“Michele, that’s cuckoo land stuff. Mental retardation isn’t caused by a vaccination.”) And as for Romney, Christie would have a solid case to make that you really can govern as a full-throated conservative in a blue state.
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Perhaps the best aspect to a Christie governance is his inclination to challenge conservatives, to aspire beyond rhetoric. At AEI he concluded:

[S]ome people say I’m too combative, some people say I’m too much of a fighter. Well, I’ll tell you, I’m fighting now because now is the time that matters most for New Jersey’s future and in America’s future. We are teetering on the edge of disaster. And I love when people talk about American exceptionalism but American exceptionalism has to include the courage to do the right thing. It cannot just be a belief that because we are exceptional, everything will work okay. Part of truly being exceptional is being willing to do the difficult things, is to stop playing the political games , stop looking at the bumper pool of politics and to step up and start doing the right thing. . . . See it seems to me, that what America is really all about is about a group of people who came from every corner of this earth because they wanted a chance for greatness. That’s what has made us the greatest country on Earth. Our calling for greatness at this time is to confront these issues, to say them out loud, and to stop playing around and to not waste another minute. . . .

Rubin includes more of the text from Christie’s speech in her post, which you should read to understand why people are so impressed.

One of the reasons why I was so behind a Paul Ryan run, is because people who have the gift of being able to speak brilliantly extemporaneously, are a rare commodity. We need such a person to run against Obama to clean his clock in a debate. Obama’s slick propaganda would be reduced to the weak pablum that it is, matched against the superior rhetorical skills of a Paul Ryan or Chris Christie.

Do we really need another affable Texan stammering at the microphone about “compassionate conservatism” or some such.?

The buzz has finally reached New Media Animation. Stand by for some seriously silly speculations:

NMA touches on some of the issues in which Chris Christie differs from the base, not including his recent, almost disqualifying comments on global warming. Hopefully, he’ll look further into the issue and his position will “evolve”….

You can check his positions on major issues, here.

It appears that he is extremely weak on environmental issues:

• Jersey shore for tourism instead of offshore drilling. (Aug 2011)
• $157 million for Green Acres open-space acquisition. (Aug 2011)