Republicans 2016

[Michael Scally MD]

Chris Christie's Entire Career Reeks
It's not just the bridge
Chris Christie's Rise and Fall | New Republic

Has there ever been a political reversal of fortune as rapid and as absolute as the one just experienced by Chris Christie? At warp speed, the governor of New Jersey has gone from the most popular politician in the country to the most embattled; from the Republicans’ brightest hope for 2016 to a man with an FBI target on his back. One minute, he was releasing jokey vanity videos starring Alec Baldwin and assorted celebrity pals; the next, he was being ridiculed by his lifelong idol, Bruce Springsteen. Mere weeks ago, Christie was a straight-talking, corruption-busting everyman. Now, he is a liar, a bully, a buffoon.

What is remarkable about this meltdown is that it isn’t the result of some deep secret that has been exposed to the world, revealing a previously unimagined side to the candidate. Many of the scandals and mini-scandals and scandals-within-scandals that the national media is salivating over have been in full view for years. Even the now-infamous Bridgegate was percolating for months before it exploded into the first major story of the next presidential race.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

Is Christie Using Nixon’s Playbook?
Is Christie Using Nixon’s Playbook? by Elizabeth Drew | NYRblog | The New York Review of Books

During the 1973 Watergate hearings, Howard Baker, the Republican Senate leader and a close ally of the Nixon White House, asked repeatedly, “What did the president know and when did he know it?” This was and continues to be widely seen as the definitive way to establish a political leader’s innocence or guilt of misdeeds within his administration. And so the question is now being echoed in the case of New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, in particular on television—it has even led a national network news broadcast. This is a big break for Christie.

Christie himself has helped set up this question—leading reporters on a merry chase to pin down precisely what he knew when about the infamous closing of two of the three traffic lanes leading into the George Washington Bridge from Fort Lee, New Jersey for four days last September. According to the received wisdom, if Christie was found to have participated in the plotting or to have known at the time why the lanes were closed, it would make all the difference in assessing his culpability. Deliberately or not, the governor’s fingerprints weren’t on the order to close the lanes, which was given in code—“time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee”—by his deputy chief of staff to his special appointee to the Port Authority, who replied, “Got it.”

But this isn’t really the issue. The issue is whether the governor can be held accountable for what happened at very high levels in his administration.

Christie has already had to walk back his assertion in January that he didn’t know about the closures either beforehand or while they were in effect, which would seem to have required willful ignorance of an event that was drawing a lot of attention in his state; but later he said he didn’t know about the closings prior to their taking place. Despite contemporaneous news accounts, and desperate attempts by the mayor of Fort Lee to reach him, and by some of his top allies to prevent disclosure to the public of the controversy, Christie insists he knew nothing until The Wall Street Journal published an angry email from the New York-appointed director of the Port Authority, to New Jersey officials in the agency, saying that the closings involved illegalities and that the director was going to reverse them. But the story of the email didn’t appear until October 1, almost a full month after the closings. And yet on another occasion, Christie said that he had first learned about the closures in September, after the lanes were reopened. (The state legislature is looking into the testimony of a Christie appointee at the Port Authority that the purpose of the closure was to conduct a traffic study—under suspicion that this was part of a cover-up. Anyway, what was the point of the study? You close lanes, you get a traffic jam.)

On the basis of what we know and what seems conceivable, Christie is not Nixon—Nixon’s personality made him a unique figure in our politics. Nor does it appear that Christie’s administration engaged in the abuse of power to the extent that the Nixon White House did. But there does seem to be a pattern in Christie’s activities that have now come under scrutiny, and indications of corruption on a scale that could be unprecedented even for New Jersey, a state known for corruption. Christie has morphed from a “bully” into a man who has governed by creating an atmosphere of fear and retribution.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

Chris Christie’s Bullying Map of New Jersey
Chris Christie’s Bullying Map of New Jersey | New Republic

 

[Michael Scally MD]

Portrait of the Governor as a Young Man
Chris Christie's forgotten early years of scandal and failure.
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/02/portrait-of-the-governor-as-a-young-man-chris-christie-103502.html

Earlier this week, when the Star-Ledger declared “we blew this one,” calling its endorsement of Chris Christie during last fall’s New Jersey gubernatorial race “regrettable,” it seemed like any remaining faith in Christie had evaporated.

Christie has not yet fallen, but the look in his eyes suggests he knows his fingers are slipping off the ledge, one at a time. Even if no documents emerge that put Christie’s fingerprints on the George Washington Bridge, he’s already in such trouble that to let even something as inconsequential as a months-old endorsement rest unrevoked would be an embarrassment.

Amid all the hand-wringing by the press over Christie warning signs they might have missed, it’s instructive to take a close look at the governor’s earliest, mostly forgotten, political adventures. Bridgegate wasn’t a sudden fall from grace—it was just the first time anyone was paying attention.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

Another Christie childhood friend witnessed traffic surge
Another Christie childhood friend witnessed traffic surge | MSNBC

A Port Authority police officer with personal ties to New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie was at the George Washington Bridge when access lanes were closed last September and personally drove David Wildstein, the Christie appointee who supervised the closings, on a tour of the area as traffic brought it to a standstill.

Documents submitted to a New Jersey legislative committee by Wildstein also show that the officer, Lieutenant Thomas “Chip” Michaels, appears to have sent periodic text messages to Wildstein updating him on the effects of the lane closures and their crippling impact on the town of Fort Lee. In one message, on the first day of the lane closures, Michaels told Wildstein he might have an idea to “make this better.” It is not clear what he meant.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

36 Hours On The Fake Campaign Trail With Donald Trump
Over the course of 25 years, he’s repeatedly toyed with the idea of running for president and now, maybe, governor of New York. With all but his closest apostles finally tired of the charade, even the Donald himself has to ask, what’s the point? On the plane and by the pool with the man who will not be king.
36 Hours On The Fake Campaign Trail With Donald Trump

Donald Trump is sitting in the passenger seat of a black SUV packed with four well-dressed yes-men — and me — as we wind through the snowy roads of Manchester, New Hampshire on a quiet Tuesday morning in January. He has just finished a series of speeches and interviews at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics designed to stoke speculation about his political ambitions. His most recent gambit has been to make noise about running for governor in New York, but none of the students, activists, and local politicos he just spent the morning glad-handling seemed interested — a fact he notes with a tinge of frustration as soon as we get in the car.

“They didn’t ask one question about running for governor,” Trump tells his aides, rubbing his hands together as the vehicle fills with the alcoholic scent of hand sanitizer. “They didn’t care.”

There is a tense moment of silence before the driver offers, “They probably think you’re already past that.”

Trump likes this theory. “That’s interesting,” he says, raising his voice so that everyone in the car can hear. “Did you hear what he said? He said they think I’m past that. I can’t tell you how many people have said that to me. They say, ‘What are you doing running for governor?’” He punctuates the last word with the sort of disgusted tone he might use if someone asked him to trade in his private plane for a Bolt Bus ticket. “It’s a good point.”

The notion that he is simply too big — too presidential — for a measly job in the Albany Statehouse has temporarily quelled his insecurity. But after this morning, Trump can no longer escape the fact that his political “career” — a long con that the blustery billionaire has perpetrated on the country for 25 years by repeatedly pretending to consider various runs for office, only to bail out after generating hundreds of headlines — finally appears to be on the brink of collapse.

The reason: Nobody seems to believe him anymore.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

Christie Request for Fort Lee Mayor Interview Is Rebuffed
Christie Request for Fort Lee Mayor Interview Is Rebuffed - Bloomberg

Mark Sokolich, the mayor of Fort Lee, New Jersey, turned down a request by lawyers for the office of Governor Chris Christie to ask him about deliberate traffic jams near the George Washington Bridge that paralyzed the town.

Randy Mastro, an attorney representing Christie’s office, sent a letter Feb. 8 to Sokolich’s lawyer, Timothy Donohue, seeking an interview and copies of communications on the tie-ups. Sokolich, a Democrat, has said he believes the lane closures at the bridge from Sept. 9 to 12 were meant to punish him for not backing the re-election of Christie, a Republican.

Donohue denied the request in a letter yesterday, saying his client “fully intends” to cooperate in investigations by the state legislature and U.S. Attorney Paul Fishman in Newark, New Jersey. They are probing who ordered the lane closures and why. Approval ratings for Christie, 51, have dropped during the scandal. He is weighing a White House run in 2016. Mastro’s firm is doing its own internal investigation for Christie’s office.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

CROSSING CHRISTIE
What the bridge scandal says about the Governor’s political style, and his future.
Ryan Lizza: Crossing Chris Christie : The New Yorker

 

[Michael Scally MD]

EXCLUSIVE: CHRISTIE PROSECUTOR GETS ITS STAR WITNESS TO START TALKING
David Wildstein, the NJ governor's man inside the Port Authority, replied to the infamous e-mail on "traffic problems in Fort Lee."
Christie Prosecutor Gets Its Star Witness to Start Talking - Esquire

Bad news for Chris Christie -- and very good news for the citizens of New Jersey: Esquire has learned from sources close to the investigation that David Wildstein, the former Port Authority operative who helped plan and execute the Great Fort Lee Clusterfk, is now cooperating with Paul Fishman, the federal prosecutor investigating the soon-to-be-ex-governor and his minions for criminal conduct. Fishman has also increased the number of investigators at work on the case, and has begun presenting evidence and witnesses to a grand jury in Newark.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

Chris Christie Is Toast
Federal prosecutors have their teeth in the New Jersey governor's close associates. And they ain't letting go.
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/04/chris-christie-is-toast-105443.html

 

[fizzisnumerouno]

He's a RINO anyway.

 

[deadliftinghorse]

Republicans need to get a moderate in the the race, but the moderates never survive the primaries

 

[deadliftinghorse]

electoral vote system is fucked, we need to go back to the popular vote

 

[deadliftinghorse]

we wouldn't have gotten stuck with Bush the second time if the POP vote ruled

 

[CensoredBoardsSuck]

Republicans need to get a moderate in the the race, but the moderates never survive the primaries

Romney was a moderate. So were McCain and Dole. The do get past the primaries. It's the general election they can't seem to win.

My feeling is that moderates from either party don't win because they are, by their very nature, boring. They don't excite the populace. Clinton was a bit of an exception but only because the Democrats were desperate for the White House after twelve years in exile. Once he got past the primary, the Democrats were all-in.

 

[deadliftinghorse]

Romney was a moderate AFTER the primary. he got slammed during the general election for taking positions that were far more moderate than he claimed he held in the primaries. every republican is a moderate in the general election, but the true moderates don't get out of the primaries, you gotta be conservative to win Texas and all that. I'll give you Mccain though, he was a moderate, I thought he would have made a good president myself, too bad Palin got brought on board, what a fucking nightmare that cunt is

 

[fizzisnumerouno]

Romney was a moderate AFTER the primary. he got slammed during the general election for taking positions that were far more moderate than he claimed he held in the primaries. every republican is a moderate in the general election, but the true moderates don't get out of the primaries, you gotta be conservative to win Texas and all that. I'll give you Mccain though, he was a moderate, I thought he would have made a good president myself, too bad Palin got brought on board, what a fucking nightmare that cunt is

Yet she has more intuition than the goober in charge. Yes, you can see Russia from one part of Alaska and yes Putin did go after Ukraine and yes US natty resources are the key to geopolitical dominance. Personally though, I love Rand Paul. We've had 5 presidents in a row shit on the Constitution, we need one that will get us back on Constitutional track (though the current office holder did rep the constitution as a senator.... At least he claimed to).

 

[deadliftinghorse]

that dumb cunt is a walking Jerry Springer show man, she's not a political anything, she's an entertainer that gets paid by fox to screech in her cunty voice about shit she doesn't know and adopts opinions that she doesn't carry

 

[nuncaquite]

that dumb cunt is a walking Jerry Springer show man, she's not a political anything, she's an entertainer that gets paid by fox to screech in her cunty voice about shit she doesn't know and adopts opinions that she doesn't carry

That makes her different from other politicians? How?[)]

 

[deadliftinghorse]

she gets paid by a cable network