NJ voters are so over Chris Christie

if you're driving toward a cliff, you don't speed up.

In part I almost agree with ram. I mean, I can't stand Christie, but he didn't actually do most of what he promised. If he had been truly shredding the state government at least he could say he delivered to his own party.

ml1 said:

I've lived in NJ all my life. And as bad as some governors have been, there's no contest. Christie has been the worst, and most destructive. And it's not just my opinion. By most objective measures, his term has been a disaster for the state.

I cannot even bear to read news reports about him. He's been absolutely horrible for New Jersey. There's no getting around that.

ml1 said:

just goes to show how many people don't get past the superficial. he was sold to voters as honest, with integrity, and a "moderate." he isn't any of those things. but he is an obnoxious boor and an embarrassment to the state.

"Embarrassment" is putting it mildly. Christie had the Navy Seal William Brown (34-year-old Rutgers law school student, veteran of three deployments in Iraq) ejected from one of his "town hall" meetings, after calling Brown an "idiot." Brown commented that he had served in combat duty for his country. Afterwards, Brown actually apologized to Christie for interrupting the meeting. Christie apologizes to no one.

GOP State Senator Rips Christie over State of the State Address
http://www.nj.com/politics/index.ssf/2015/01/conservative_nj_senator_rips_christie_over_state_o.html#incart_m-rpt-1

Even though previous Governors were, for the most part, bad to awful, we have to judge each Governor, present and future, on what they are doing to make things better. Christie has made many problems worse and for that he did not do his job. He had a compliant legislature and did very little on education, tax reform, pension reform, and infrastructure. He seemed to delight in these faux confrontations and make people think he is tough. It became more of a veneer -- snarl and get angry and then do nothing.

When he gets to the national stage and presents a challenge to someone, the record he amassed will come under scrutiny and the opposition research will come out. One thing we can have fun watching is him trying to control his temper. Other candidates will learn to provoke him and make him seem very much less than presidential. Do people really want to see a snarling dog as President. Maybe some do, but that snarling dog has shown he will turn on anyone, maybe even his base. Whoops, he has -- he has done nothing but hurt the state and therefore the people who elected him.

ml1 said:

it's saddening to see how much damage to our state has been done by one man in just 5 years.

Come on dude. He was clean up crew for the previous idiots.

mammabear said:

ml1 said:

it's saddening to see how much damage to our state has been done by one man in just 5 years.

Come on dude. He was clean up crew for the previous idiots.

Do you think that not paying into the pension was a good idea? The courts are already ruling that the pensioners are entitled to the money that was promised. Sooner or later, the court is going to require the state to continue paying the pensioners even if the treasury is empty. There will be only one way to do that: raise taxes.

Would it be better to pay a small tax increase now or get a big kick in the ass 15 years from now? By the way, unlike cities, states cannot go bankrupt.

mammabear said:

ml1 said:

it's saddening to see how much damage to our state has been done by one man in just 5 years.

Come on dude. He was clean up crew for the previous idiots.

he cleaned up nothing. and he doubled down on all the bad stuff his predecessors were doing.

and he canceled ARC (which he supported until he needed to grab the budget to use it for the transportation fund). that will haunt the state for decades, unless another tunnel is built in its place. that's all on Christie.

he's been running for president since the day he took office, to the detriment of the state. Why do we have bridges being closed because they're unsafe? because Christie can't ask the legislature to raise the gas tax. and if they did, he'd veto it. why? because you can't run in GOP primaries and win if you've ever signed a tax increase.

Christie is an absolute disaster. He's done every terrible thing his predecessors have done, and then added his own unique terrible things.

even his so-called achievements like pension reform are phony. he's a fraud. It's not like I want him to be a disastrous governor because he's a Republican. I wish he had been a smashing success as governor. I don't want to live in a state with bridges that are falling down and railroad tunnels ready to collapse just so I have ammunition to criticize Christie. He's terrible. And he's fooled an awful lot of people for a long time. Until now. He's only fooling about a third of the people now.

So we are not in trouble to to the past acts of Whitman, McGreevy, Corzine, etc? You want to blame the financial state of affairs of NJ on Christie? All on him?

straw man.

I haven't blamed all of the problems on Christie. I'm just saying that he has continued every disastrous policy of his predecessors, and added other disastrous policies of his own.

here's a unique Christie spin on NJ pension fund chicanery:
http://www.nj.com/politics/index.ssf/2014/12/nj_pension_funds_sue_christie_over_pension_grab.html

mammabear said:

So we are not in trouble to to the past acts of Whitman, McGreevy, Corzine, etc? You want to blame the financial state of affairs of NJ on Christie? All on him?

Why not? Previously, all the financial problems of the state were blamed on Corzine -- the collapse of the national economy notwithstanding. Now even with a growing national economy, with Christie we're falling behind. He deserves to get hammered.

mammabear said:

ml1 said:

it's saddening to see how much damage to our state has been done by one man in just 5 years.

Come on dude. He was clean up crew for the previous idiots.

What has he cleaned up?

Can you name one positive thing he has done for the state? One thing he has done to "clean up" anything?

Woodrow Wilson lost NJ, so that's not a requirement for winning a presidential bid.

mammabear said:

So we are not in trouble to to the past acts of Whitman, McGreevy, Corzine, etc? You want to blame the financial state of affairs of NJ on Christie? All on him?

He's in Trenton now. They ain't.

dave said:

Woodrow Wilson lost NJ, so that's not a requirement for winning a presidential bid.

that isn't really the point though. he was likely to never win NJ, even when he had a 60% approval rate as guv. But the question now is, given his record of failure here, why does any sentient being working as a pundit still think he's qualified to be president. I suppose the answer is that most working pundits aren't sentient beings.

No Christie fan here, but I'm curious, why do you all feel it so unlikely that he'd win NJ in a national election? He won the governorship twice, apparently with Democrats crossing over.

I'm guessing it's just the greater turnout in a Presidential election(?)

even when he was popular as governor, polls showed him behind every likely Democratic nominee. Now that his approval rating has cratered, it's even less likely he could win. at this point, if he ran for governor again, it's likely he'd lose.

jimmurphy said:

No Christie fan here, but I'm curious, why do you all feel it so unlikely that he'd win NJ in a national election? He won the governorship twice, apparently with Democrats crossing over.

I'm guessing it's just the greater turnout in a Presidential election(?)

I think there's also widespread belief that his shtick won't play so well outside the Northeast.

Evangelicals are unlikely to go for him and tea-party types will find a lot to dislike too.

jimmurphy said:

No Christie fan here, but I'm curious, why do you all feel it so unlikely that he'd win NJ in a national election? He won the governorship twice, apparently with Democrats crossing over.

I'm guessing it's just the greater turnout in a Presidential election(?)

Governor Christie himself was worried that, if Cory Booker was running on the same election day as he was, that would boost Democratic turn-out and cut into the Governor's vote margin, if not tip the election the other way. That's why he had us waste $12 million for a special Senate election a month before the regular election day.

it's impossible to prove, but without Hurricane Sandy, the governor might have been in a really tough reelection fight. understandably, when people are panicked and feeling vulnerable, an autocratic leader can give comfort. the my-way-or-the-highway aspect of Christie's personality that can be so counter productive in good times can be comforting when people are looking for a leader in a crisis. in fact, if you look at the article I linked to initially, Christie's approval rating hovered just above and below 50% before Sandy. at that level, reelection is not a shoo-in.

http://publicmind.fdu.edu/2015/notgreat/

Let's put it this way. If 5 people take a dump in your bathtub, and you hire a guy to clean that up and 5 years later it's all still there, do you blame the 5 people or the guy who you hired to clean it?

Neither... I would blame myself for waiting 5 years.

Guess what words the Governor did not utter in his State of the State speech the other day.

"Sandy", "shore", "beach", "storm", "restore", "boardwalk" are among them.

http://www.state.nj.us/governor/news/news/552015/approved/20150113k.html

One would have thought that ongoing recovery from "Superstorm Sandy" would be part of a speech about the state of our State. I think his bungling will be a bigger liability than the "benefit" he received from blustering about at the time of the storm.

ridski said:

Let's put it this way. If 5 people take a dump in your bathtub, and you hire a guy to clean that up and 5 years later it's all still there, do you blame the 5 people or the guy who you hired to clean it?

I'm not sure what to say about this analogy but I think it may be brilliant. But I'm not sure who to blame...

ridski said:

Let's put it this way. If 5 people take a dump in your bathtub, and you hire a guy to clean that up and 5 years later it's all still there, do you blame the 5 people or the guy who you hired to clean it?

If this an issue you have frequently?

ridski said:

Let's put it this way. If 5 people take a dump in your bathtub, and you hire a guy to clean that up and 5 years later it's all still there, do you blame the 5 people or the guy who you hired to clean it?

To be fair, the things that Christie needs to clean up cannot be done in five years. However he seems to have taken his own dump in the tub, then smeared the ***** all over the bathroom. All while claiming that he is making the room smell like roses.

ridski said:

Let's put it this way. If 5 statists take a dump in your bathtub, and you hire a statist to clean that up and 5 years later it's all still there, do you blame the 5 statists or the statist who you hired to clean it?

For Ram's benefit, I changed things.

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