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SURPRISE! Chris Christie's 2016 Gambit

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run Barack Obama out of the White House .    

Their pissed-off reaction casts the impression that the lack of subtlety in Christie's unambiguously pro-Obama post-hurricane chatter has a whole bunch of Repubs feeling like they've been trampled on by a turncoat Republican.   Yet, for the Obama camp -- along with anyone who feels that what goes around should come around -- the criticism of Christie's fulsome bi-partisanism by some of his GOP brethren offered a rare opportunity to indulge in a bit of unabashed schadenfreude.  

It certainly was in this quarter.    I'm unashamedly welcoming of the shameful joy I feel about the utterly luckless yet entirely warranted turn of events exacted on a callous and mendacious campaign that -- until perhaps just moments after Hurricane Sandy made landfall -- was all but proclaiming victory.     Instead, no sooner had the skies cleared did it become apparent that Mitt's campaign was being "Romneyed" by Christie.   

If being Romneyed could be loosely defined as: to say something to one crowd and something entirely different to another, then this term probably applies to a situation where a guy who delivers the keynote speech for his party's candidate later provides what amounts to a series to 30-second promos on behalf of the guy his candidate is running against.  

This nascent Christie-Obama "bromance" clearly caught the GOP's Obama posse wide open which, in true reactionary form, led to a humdrum outpouring of boilerplate shrill from the usual posse of sanctimonious GOP purists including, the purest of the pure, Rush Limbaugh:

"New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has decided to play the role of a Greek column today for President Obama," fulminated Rush on his radio program.

Christie in 2016

But did Christie pull a full Romney; or was it something a bit different?   I don't actually translate Christie's effusive praise of Obama as the Governor's way of sabotaging Romney's campaign.   It seemed more like the manifestation of Christie's inner fears about the potential long-term impact of the "Romney Effect" on the GOP brand.   My guess is that if the Republicans had been smart enough to nominate a mainstream pol like Tim Pawlenty, the torrid -- albeit unmistakably symbiotic -- post-hurricane dalliance between Christie and Obama would have never happened.   Why?   Because Christie has no apparent issues with his party's Pawlentys -- i.e., Republicans with core values.   Thus, it's easy to assume that since Mitt stands for nothing, a politician like Christie -- who leaves no room for doubt about his own ideologies -- probably can't stand Mitt.   That keynote speech was an exercise in party loyalty and opportunity to further establish a path for the Governor's own political future, not an indication of his fondness for Mitt.

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Anthony Barnes, of Boston, Massachusetts, is a left-handed leftist. "When I was a young man, I wanted to change the world. I found it was difficult to change the world, so I tried to change my nation. When I found I couldn't change the (more...)
 

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