It's going to take a whole lot more than magic for the Villagers' new anointed one, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, to change the Republican party. As much as the pundits in the media want to pretend that Christie is some sort of moderate, that's not going to change the fact that he's actually a hardcore conservative, a right-wing bully and a jerk.
Nicole warned us yesterday before these shows aired that we were going to see a coronation of Christie taking place and boy was she right. Here's an example of the slobbering from this Sunday's Meet the Press:
DAVID GREGORY: And welcome all. A lot to get to, including Chris Christie and the future of the Republican Party. Joe, your book is coming out at an ideal time, because the Republican Party is looking at the future. Do they see Chris Christie in the center of it?
JOE SCARBOROUGH: Well, I don't know if they do or not. But, you know, this past week it's been fascinating. People have been saying, "Well, are we Chris Christie Republicans or are we Cuccinelli Republicans?" really--
(OVERTALK)
DAVID GREGORY: --ran unsuccessfully for governor in Virginia.
JOE SCARBOROUGH: Yeah. We have to have both sides together. It's not an either or. And the day after the election everybody was saying, "Well, who has the best path forward?" We have to have the Ted Cruz wing of the party and the Colin Powell wing of the party back if we want to win elections, like Ike, Nixon and Reagan won it. There's a reason why those guys won for 49 states. There's a reason why, even in 1988, where H.W. Bush won in the landslide over Michael Dukakis. And that's because people like Ted Cruz and people like Colin Powell were all under the same big tent.
We've had this ideological witch hunt for the past three, four years, where you're either insufficiently conservative or else you're a member of the Tea Party and you're too ideologically driven. And so this divide has to-- and this is not kumbaya talk. This is about winning.
DAVID GREGORY: Right.
JOE SCARBOROUGH: This is about winning elections like Nick Saban wins football games.
(OVERTALK)
JOE SCARBOROUGH: No, I'm dead serious.
DAVID GREGORY: And why--
JOE SCARBOROUGH: Why are we here if we want to change America, if we want to change the world--
DAVID GREGORY: And we're going to talk--
JOE SCARBOROUGH: --we have to start winning elections again.
DAVID GREGORY: And this is really the thesis of your book, which we're going to talk to when we have a chance to just focus on the book in a little bit. Let's broaden this out, though. Mark Halperin, this is, as Joe says, the fight in the two wings of the Republican Party.
MARK HALPERIN: It's a huge fight. And the party's going to have to sort it out. And it's got to be done by leaders. It can't be done by people on cable T.V., with all due respect to cable, or the internet or Twitter. Leaders are going to have to play a huge part of this.
And Chris Christie is someone who is magical in the way politicians can be magical, like our last three presidents. People like having them on T.V.. He's a good talker. He won. Joe said winning is really what matters. He wants to win. He's going to take over the Republican Governors Association and see if he can win there.
And the last thing is he wants to change the party. He wants to be a leader to change it. You can't say that about everybody else who people are talking about for '16.
