Thread: Christie 2016 loses to 'generic Republican' in 3/4 of the country...

Chris Christie's provincial problem: Can he win outside the Northeast?

A recent poll indicates that Christie's popularity might not extend far beyond his home state

By Jon Terbush | 11:31am ET



There's a whole lot of country out there. (AP Photo/Rich Schultz)

If the entire nation were one big New Jersey, Chris Christie would have the 2016 Republican presidential nomination in the bag.
Except there is only one New Jersey and, as a result, Christie's hypothetical path to the nomination will have to wind through far less favorable territory than solely the Garden State. And while it's tempting to extrapolate Christie's blowout re-election last week as a sign of his superior electability and presumed frontrunner status, there are questions about whether the New Jersey governor's broad support will extend beyond his home turf.
In the latest such indicator, an NBC poll out Tuesday found that Christie was the preferred candidate of GOP voters in just one region, the Northeast. There, 57 percent of Republicans said they would support Christie in a GOP primary versus 22 percent who said they would not.
However, pluralities of Republicans everywhere else said they would prefer a different candidate. Christie trailed a generic "other" GOPer in the Midwest (35/30 percent), the South (29/27 percent) and the West (40/22 percent.)
All told, Republican respondents nationwide are equally split between Christie, anti-Christie, and unsure. Of course, this poll might just illustrate the power of hometown advantage — Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) could be the preferred candidate in the West, for instance — but it does highlight the governor's main problem should he launch a presidential campaign. Though he has significant bipartisan appeal — he won a third of Democrats and two-thirds of Independents in his re-election bid, according to the New York Times' exit polling data — that might not be much of a draw to many conservatives.
Other recent polling bears out that point.
In a recent survey conducted by Quinnipiac, only one-third of self-identified conservatives nationwide had a favorable opinion of Christie, while one-quarter viewed him unfavorably. And while Christie took the top spot in a PPP survey of a theoretical GOP primary earlier this month, he was the top choice among only three percent of "very conservative" respondents. That put him dead last with that demographic, behind the likes of Sens. Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, and Marco Rubio — as well as some more farfetched candidates like Sarah Palin and Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal.
Matt Lewis remarked on this problem in The Week way back in February, comparing Christie to Jon Huntsman, the former Utah governor who positioned himself as the electable moderate in 2012 only to fizzle out in remarkable, whimpering fashion. Though Christie had some true conservative bona fides, Lewis wrote, conservative voters still suspected his high popularity back home was more so "directly related to his willingness to throw fellow Republicans under the bus. "
Christie has notably sparred with unions, slashed state spending, and wagged his finger at teachers, all of which should win him support with conservatives. But he's also developed a moderate image, dropping a challenge to gay marriage, endorsing some limited gun control reforms, and suggesting illegal immigrants should be given in-state tuition rates.
Those latter positions, which padded Christie's re-election margin, could become huge liabilities in a Republican primary with its typically more conservative electorate. Fox's Brit Hume noted that problem on Sunday, saying Tea Party types "are not persuaded by electability arguments, and they don't like anybody who they think may turn out to be a moderate."
"In some respects Chris Christie is indeed a moderate," he added, "so he has that to be concerned about."
Plus Christie infamously embraced President Obama following Hurricane Sandy, drawing ire from virtually everyone else in his party in the process. If he does indeed run, you can only imagine what sort of fun his opponents would have with all the pictures of him hugging, high-fiving, and just plain broing out with Obama.
Christie, with his name recognition and enviable fundraising platform, would be a formidable candidate in a general election. Yet the biggest question about his 2016 ambitions may not be whether he can defeat Hillary Clinton or whoever else emerges from the Democratic side, but whether he can first convince his own party's skeptics that he's really one of them.

http://theweek.com/article/index/252...-the-northeast

http://drudgereport.com/


FOURNIER: Chris Christie's Rollout Models Last 3 Presidents...

Dodges questions on citizenship for illegals...

"In some respects Chris Christie is indeed a moderate," he added, "so he has that to be concerned about."

I don't view Christie as a moderate he is somewhere left of center the question is how far left.

Echoes of T.R.?

Even before his reelection last week, some Republicans were hailing Gov. Christie as the new Theodore Roosevelt, a savior who appeals to Democrats, independents, and members of his own party. In the wake of Christie’s 22-point victory in a Northern blue state, expect more comparisons to the Rough Rider, whose 1904 presidential election enabled the GOP to sweep every state in the North and the West, a first in three decades.

After losing the popular vote in five of the last six presidential contests, Republicans desperately need a candidate who can win the White House. A down-to-earth, straight-talking two-term governor known for standing up to political machines and delivering commonsense solutions will look promising come 2016.

But it’s tricky drawing parallels between Christie and TR, whose rise more than a century ago extended the Republican hegemony of American politics ushered in by the Civil War.

Like the 26th president, Christie is difficult to pigeonhole. He is pragmatic and independent, willing to challenge party thinking in ways that irritate fellow Republicans.

Christie, after all, warmly received President Obama at the Jersey Shore a week before the 2012 election, chastised House GOP intransigence regarding Hurricane Sandy disaster relief, and tangled with Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky over National Security Agency surveillance. Also like Roosevelt, Christie’s candor resonates with the public unlike any GOP figure since Ronald Reagan.

Meanwhile, those who suggest that TR’s Bull Moose candidacy in 1912 offers the governor a model – not in terms of bolting from the GOP to form a third party but in moving to the political left – misread both men. Roosevelt remained a conservative his entire life. Indeed, his brand of progressivism – what he called “the highest and wisest form of conservatism” – prevented the United States from turning socialist, a real possibility in the early 20th century.

Nor was the first American Nobel Peace Prize winner a multiculturalist. Rather, Roosevelt believed in American exceptionalism and was bullish on his country, its child-rich families, and its ideals; he defended “Americanism” as the hope of the world. The hero of San Juan Hill was a first-order patriot.

Similarly, Christie is a pro-American conservative at heart. While his record will come under scrutiny as he considers his presidential prospects, he has held the line on taxes and spending, delivered public-pension and teacher-tenure reforms, and freed his state from the cap-and-trade scheme of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. Moreover, he has been reasonably successful in working with a Democratic legislature – something TR never faced. Christie surely understands that his future is not one of adopting liberal causes, as some Democrats hope.

Where the Teddy connection breaks down is Christie’s favorable standing with Wall Street and the Republican donor class. Christie is not at odds with the GOP power brokers whom TR the Trust Buster fought his entire career. Nor does Christie need fear the kind of political bosses who, behind closed doors, denied TR the nomination in 1912, a tactic that ended poorly not just for Roosevelt but for the party and nation.

That clash started when, as governor of New York, Roosevelt deplored “the wealthy criminal class” for ignoring the interests of farmers, tradesmen, and small-business owners. The youthful governor consequently fought for legislation that improved working conditions and protected industrial workers, while pushing through the legislature a groundbreaking corporate franchise tax.

His disposition toward ordinary Americans prepared TR for his first crisis as president: the five-month anthracite-coal miners strike in eastern Pennsylvania. Rather than siding with the interests of capital, TR brought both parties together and resolved the strike, laying the foundation of his “Square Deal.”

The issues differ today, but Christie has yet to translate his common-man persona into an appealing economic vision. He is not known for venting angst over the hemorrhaging of family-wage jobs among the working and middle classes, nor for addressing the 20-year pattern in his own state, where unemployment (8.5 percent) is 1.2 percentage points above the national average.

To make the TR analogy work – or, more important, to broaden his appeal nationally – Christie needs an agenda larger than tax cuts, one that overshadows the demands of the privileged FIRE sector (finance, insurance, and real estate) and rebuilds our neglected foundation of domestic manufacturing, defense-related industries, transportation infrastructure, and energy production.

Christie will also have to step up to the plate on cultural flash points. TR would roll over in his grave in learning of the governor’s acquiescence last month to a Superior Court judge who single-handedly imposed same-sex marriage on New Jersey. TR, a model social conservative who delivered a 1912 speech on “the right of the people to rule,” would have refused to execute a local magistrate’s decree until legislators and the governor – or the voters – had their say.

Roosevelt, the father of six, would have been “dee-lighted,” as he often enunciated, to clarify why marriage law cannot dispose of either husbands or wives, fathers or mothers. Instead of fighting back, Christie looks as if he’s bowing to judicial supremacy and favoring elite lifestyles over the concerns of Middle America. TR never carried water for the plutocrats of his day.

Nonetheless, Christie is beginning to resemble a 21st-century Bull Moose, and may win his party’s 2016 nod.

But whether Jersey’s other “Boss” can truly follow in the footsteps of the beloved Mount Rushmore fixture depends on whether Christie heeds the lessons of TR, and continues his post-Sandy drive to identify with the people over the powerful.

Robert first published this piece at Philly.com

Tagged as: chris christie, GOP, Robert Patterson

http://www.conservativeactionalerts....echoes-of-t-r/

the GOP and RNC and playing with Fire Pushing 4 years of all you can eat chicken wings Christie at the White House

Conservatives, Constitutionalists and the Tea Party are ready to do Scorched Earth on the GOP / RNC

I'm ready to Vote Hillary if this is what the GOP and RNC and trying to sell

Matter of fact ... if Jeb Bush is any where near being Nominated I'm prepared to vote a straight Democrat ticket just to get rid of the Psychos

November 18, 2013 By Star Parker

Chris Christie is no presidential contender

If the last two presidential elections tell us anything, it’s that Republicans don’t succeed with candidates who lack clear vision and conviction consistent with the party’s conservative platform.

Given this, I understand why Democrats think that New Jersey governor Chris Christie should be a leading contender for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination. But why would any Republican see a typical political operative like Christie as presidential material?

With the information we have in front of us today, there is every reason to believe that 2016 will be a year of opportunity for Republicans to run a serious and exciting reform-minded candidate — a candidate who is ready and able to provide the kind of leadership it will take to breathe life back into our faltering nation.

The Obama presidency is exuding incompetence and unraveling on all fronts.

Each day we are greeted with new news about the crashing of the ill-conceived and misguided Affordable Care Act — Obamacare.

Looking at current economic realities at home and national security realities abroad, little good news appears evident and there isn’t much reason to expect any big positive surprises.

The American public is waking up to the fact that they elected, now twice, a president who is long on rhetoric and way short on delivery, and they are getting tired of it.

As things continue in this vein, by 2016, the American people will be ready for some real hope and change. The door will be open for a Republican candidate who is ready to take on the real challenges facing us, and offer solutions like across-the-board reform of entitlements, real tax reform, real cuts in superfluous government spending and reassertion of a strong and clear America in the international arena.

How can a governor like Christie, who has been at the helm of one of the worst-performing state economies in the nation — unemployment and poverty rates well above the national average, among the nation’s worst in job creation, with one of the highest tax burdens in the country — be the exciting candidate Republicans will be looking for?

Why, when the American people will be thirsty for a real reform-minded leader, would Republicans turn to yet another visionless business-as-usual politico?

And what evidence is there that Christie is anything but this?

We do have plenty of evidence that Christie behaves like we would expect any business-as-usual politician to behave.

He has demonstrated that his own political calculations are more important to him than his party or his nation.

Why else would he not have made a Republican appointment to the Senate when New Jersey Democrat Sen. Frank Lautenberg passed away? Instead, he decided to allow a special election to entice popular black Newark, N.J., Mayor Corey Booker to run for the open Senate seat, taking him out of the game to challenge Christie in his re-election campaign.

At a time when every Republican vote in the Senate is crucial, Christie opted to forego the opportunity of adding another Republican vote there because of his lack of courage to take on a strong Democrat opponent in his own re-election bid.

So running against a weak and underfunded Democrat opponent, incumbent Christie was re-elected.
The nation abounds in courageous, innovative Republican governors.

Unlike Christie, who took federal money available under Obamacare and to expand Medicaid in New Jersey, 21 states are refusing to take this bribe.

And this includes states with reform-minded Republican governors like Bobby Jindal in Louisiana, Rick Perry in Texas, Scott Walker in Wisconsin and Nikki Haley in South Carolina.

And then, of course, we have Christie’s flip-flop on same-sex marriage, announcing that he would not challenge a New Jersey court decision to allow same- sex marriage — after Christie led everyone to believe he would oppose this.

So, again I ask. Why would any Republican think about Christie as a presidential contender?

Tagged as: chris christie, GOP 2016, star parker, tea party

About Star Parker

Star Parker is founder and president of CURE, a 501c3 think tank which explores and promotes market based public policy to fight poverty; she is also author of the newly revised book Uncle Sam’s Plantation. Follow Star at @StarParker.

See more posts by Star Parker


http://www.conservativeactionalerts....ial-contender/

http://www.alipac.us/f9/chris-christ...4/#post1380410

http://www.alipac.us/f9/shhhhh-sneak...g-walk-296284/