Our mostly absentee governor has returned home utterly and completely defeated. His over one-year, suicidal presidential campaign, beginning in scandal with the so-called “Bridge-Gate”, which will go to trial this spring, ended with barely whimper on February 10, 2016, when the usually blustery and confrontational blowhard meekly announced the suspension of his campaign on Facebook, like the sagging, middle-aged dink he turned out to be on the big stage.
Chris Christie’s career of garnering votes to continue culling a paycheck are no more. He will likely spend more absentee weeks and months brokering a deal with the Republican Party’s presidential frontrunner to try and get a cabinet position or a cushy federal government gig he so brazenly dismisses as some sort of welfare, because, as a serious candidate for anything going forward or certainly the final lame-duck years of his governance here in the Garden State, he is done and done.
Five years ago Christie was the darling of the national political scene. He was a mostly moderate, hard-talking, straight-shooting Republican governor of a heavy blue state and seemed to have the ear of the national party donation-class. He was begged by the party to head up a challenge to the increasingly shaky prospect of a Barack Obama second term. The Republican National Committee was certain that Obama was ripe to be taken down, and you know what—they were right. A strong candidate that could appeal to the TEA Party anger of the base and help pull in moderates while bridging the gap to the all-important general election was paramount. Christie had all of these attributes in spades.
Christie, to his credit, recognized, that he had barely gotten things going here—and by that I mean fucking them up—so he declined several times citing that he was just not ready, or more dramatically, “It’s not my time.” Republican elites turned to former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney. H was summarily hounded through a long and mostly pointless primary season by also-rans and nut cases before being roundly defeated by Obama, a stunning victory for a man with the highest unemployment rate and lowest re-election approval ratings for a sitting president in two generations
Around this time, Hurricane Sandy devastated the state and Christie committed the sin of all sins: welcoming the “despised” president of the United States warmly. He was photographed surveying the carnage with him while petitioning the federal government (gulp!) for aid. This was seen among the thug-class as being some kind of anathema, and Christie began to see backlash. Nonetheless he was reelected in 2013 and seemed poised for a 2016 run.
However, my covering of the ensuing months into this primary year, I could not find a single soul who considered Christie’s run for president realistic. It appeared as if he just joined the gaggle of other mediocre governors and some crazies to muck up the lanes. It did not help in the least that another northeastern big mouth bully completely upstaged him at every turn. Donald Trump, as he has done to most everything that people hold dear in the political realm, eviscerated the Christie purpose for running. He was bold. He was confrontational. He was politically incorrect. Christie looked liked a sad Jersey fat man screaming at a woman to shut up on CSPAN whilst in some incredible half-baked karma; Trump appeared as a polished professional wrestling version of Don Rickles with money.
Turns out Christie’s finest moment was his final one on the stump. For 10 crucial minutes on Saturday, February 6, he mentally broke Florida Senator Marco Rubio. During the ABC nationally televised debate, Christie took the young candidate apart; no small feat, since he was surging as the only establishment alternative to Trump and Texas Senator Ted Cruz only days before. Rubio had finished strong in Iowa and looked like he might make big noise and get big bucks heading into the New Hampshire vote. In classic Christie fashion, he laid into Rubio’s robotic responses to everything and for some odd reason that no one can still explain with any clarity Rubio provided ample and staggeringly stark examples of this. Christie pressed harder, himself looking like a Terminator machine, but an obviously damaged Rubio kept saying the same thing over and over and over until he was buried in the voting a few days later and remains on life support.
But this did not help Christie, who has no money and no support and was mostly a drive-by candidate—not quite the pathetic visage of Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, but pretty awful. But like Jindal, Christie is a shitty governor with shitty approval ratings, hovering around 29 percent with a state fiscally downgraded seven times in the past year and half for being broke and incapable of paying bills. My property taxes here go up exponentially on the hour and our unemployment rate is a point higher than the national average, which while being far better than when the economy was struggling, still blows when you consider the state’s geographical proximity to New York (unemployment rate there is one point better under a Democratic governor).
Now, if I have to deal with a Republican lecturing me on austerity and having the social issue flexibility of a 1950s Alabaman statesman, I expect my taxes to go down.
If Christie is not taking the federal Medicaid expansion as part of the ACA because he is trying to win the GOP nomination, then why am I paying to supplement Ohio’s medical costs, as that state’s republican governor—incidentally still in the race—John Kasich takes his? Why do I have to hear this jackass herald state’s rights and then blather on about how if he were president he would use the FBI to enforce federal law over states who have legalized marijuana? Why is it that a man born one day before me and lived through my generation goes hard-line against marriage equality after the Supreme Court deemed it legal, or say he abolished Common Core when my kid is still dong math conceived by a cyber-metric shut-in? If I have to deal with a governor who defunds Planned Parenthood and extends bear hunts in our beautiful part of the state to double the massacre of these spectacular creatures, I do not want to get raped on education taxes.
Fuck Chris Christie.
He is as useless as a titted bull and twice as stupid on Sunday.
We can only hope whoever wins this Republican nomination gets brain damage and puts him on the ticket so he can spend his days cutting ribbons and get the fuck out of my state.
Do yourself no favors and “like” this idiot at www.facebook.com/jc.author
James Campion is the Managing Editor of The Reality Check News & Information Desk and the author of “Deep Tank Jersey”, “Fear No Art”, “Trailing Jesus”, “Midnight For Cinderella” and “Y”. and his new book, “Shout It Out Loud—The Story of KISS’s Destroyer and the Making of an American Icon”.
