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Since Conservatives love a good bully, Chris Cristie has become a favorite among them, but how does that justify David Gregory's claim about him on Meet The Press?
MR. GREGORY: And you're teeing up -- Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey , talk about austerity . He gave a speech here in Washington this week that got rave reviews in part because of his plain language about taking on issues like Social Security . Here's what he said.
GOV. CHRIS CHRISTIE (R-NJ): You're going to have to raise the retirement age for Social Security . Ho , ho! I just said it, and I'm still standing here. I did not vaporize into the carpeting, and I said it.
MR. GREGORY: He didn't vaporize into the carpeting, Rick Santelli . I mean, this is the kind of plain talk that people are responding to. And yet, you just heard from Senator Durbin , you know, they want to take Social Security off the table right now in terms of dealing with that debt reduction.
The only people giving him rave reviews are Conservatives, so why did Gregory frame it in a way that appears all Americans are digging Christie's shtick? You would think that in NJ, Christie would have a 70% approval rating, but the fact is he's only a tad over fifty. Wow, you may not have known that because of all the positive media fanboy love going around.
For instance, if you look at the polling, a small sliver of potential Republican primary voters are responding to Christie in that they pick him as their first choice for a 2012 candidate. But that sliver hardly represents any sort of national response from the "people" to Christie's partisan rhetoric. Meanwhile, in his home state Christie enjoys decent support, with an approval rating of about 50 percent. Although if you only listened to the Christie media chatter from inside Beltway you'd assume his poll numbers were in the sky-high, 60 or 70 percent range.
Perhaps more telling though, is the recent poll that showed if Christie ran against Obama in 2012, the governor would lose his home state by nearly 20 points. That's right, Christie would get trounced by Obama in N.J.
I realize much of the D.C. press corps is crushing on Christie. But before they announce that "people" are responding to the governor's "plain talk," pundits might want to find out if that response extends beyond their professional class.
President Obama trounces him by twenty points now. Christie can gab with the best of them, but why does the Beltway elite class immediately transfer what the AEI crowd thinks of him over to all Americans? It's ridiculous. And getting back to reality, it's a complete fallacy that raising the age of Social Security has to happen for Social Security to remain solvent forever. It's a Conservative lie and C&L readers and Dems all over the country know this except for the Villager class.
I'm never quite sure if Villagers are just unable to distinguish "the GOP operatives and other Villagers we talk to" from "the people" or if they truly believe (perhaps correctly) that they are just the only people who matter.
I think it's kinda of both, but if I had to make a choice I'd tell Duncan that they believe that they are just the only people who matter.
