I am not shocked that Chris Christie is the recipient of wingnut welfare. After all, he managed to serve two terms as Governor of New Jersey without doing anything good for the people of that good state, which is the Republican Way. He also managed to cause his employees to go to jail while escaping any accountability for his own actions, another plus for GOP money men.

But this venture is just so very cynical that it should be immediately aborted before it has a chance to take hold. The new venture is the Christie Institute of Public Policy, where Chris Christie will receive a healthy stipend to "bring civility to modern politics."

Let's review Chris's qualifications for this new civility initiative. At the top of this post, we have an appearance on CNN's State of the Union where he blithely said the national teachers' union deserved "a punch in the face."

Teachers were a favorite target for Christie. He told one teacher at a town hall, "I'm tired of you people!" and called public schools "failure factories." Here's another example of him bullying a teacher before tossing him out. How civil.

He ripped on First Lady Michelle Obama's healthy eating initiative, and suggested that reporters "take the bat" to a 76-year old widow.

He called a doctor's radio show to yell at her, called an ex-Navy SEAL an idiot, and gave one of the most terrifying, authoritarian speeches ever at the 2016 RNC when he "prosecuted the case" against Hillary Clinton.

All of this before we ever get to Bridgegate and his lying ways which got his employees jail terms and felony convictions while he walked away free. There are myriad examples of Christie's "civility."

And yet, Christie told NJ Advance Media that "unfortunately our politics have gotten so ugly and divisive in the country that people are not having civilized conversations."

After I wipe my eyes from laughing until I cry, I remember Dave Neiwert's warning from 2010 about Christie's bullying ways:

Like Digby, I find his bullying behavior clearly fascistic -- this is how real fascists, the kind you get in Hayden Lake and at Joe Arpaio rallies, behave. I guess Americans are getting accustomed to that and a lot more approve of it. And that may be the scariest aspect of Chris Christie.

The very idea of Chris Christie receiving a lifetime stipend to promote "civility in politics" is a little like hiring Goebbels to handle PR.