Chris Christie: Thank you so much for doing your job!

The BBQ Pit
1

So after gleefully announcing that he would be staying to continue his stump for POTUS because he wasn’t needed in New Jersey, Big Loud Asshole (BLA) was shamed into coming back and doing the freakin’ job we pay him to do.

Yeah, stay in Iowa or wherever-the-fuck so you can close that 98% poll gap between you and The Donald/The Cruzinator. That’s a worthy and defensible use of your time on the taxpayer’s clock!

I guess no one has ever accused BLA of caring deeply about his citizens (care for a spite-generated epic traffic jam, anyone?)

2

If he’s wants to be of any use, perhaps the fat bastard should pick up a shovel.

3

Isn’t him not being in New Jersey a boon to the state? If I was there I’d want him to stay in Iowa forever.

4

Every time I find myself in New Jersey I often wish I was in Iowa. And I’ve never been to Iowa.

5

I hear one or two of the exists are quite nice.

6

Yes, one of them is, “Thank you for visiting NJ” and the other, “Go fuck yourself!”

7

Much of what he says in the debates makes sense. But yeah, if y’all want to hate on him, go on and Pit away.

8

It’s not so much that we really need him to keep the state functioning, it’s his pompous declaration that it was more important for him to remain in Iowa and run his pretend POTUS campaign.

9

A link might help.

10

I can’t quite be sure which position you are urging. Here are some guesses:

[ul]
[li]A sitting governor should not run for national office if his campaign takes him out if his home state[/li][li]A sitting politician of any stripe should not run for another office, since any campaign detracts from his assigned duties[/li][li]Sitting officeholders can run, but cannot announce anything if it’s done in a “pompous” manner [/li][li]A sitting political figure can run, but only if his campaign will be successful or at least among the poll leaders[/li][li]I just hate Chris Christie, and my objection does not apply to any general case apart from him[/li][/ul]

Is it any of those?

11

This is a huge storm, and it makes sense that the governor should be in the state to oversee emergency measures. But without any links to what Christie actually said, it’s hard to know whether the OP has any validity (I spent some time searching, but see anytime particularly damning). Christie did return to NJ before the storm hit, and he was in NH, not Iowa, so it’s not like he was all that far away. We folks in CA consider the distance between NH and NJ to be pretty close to “commuting distance”.

12

Christie wants to deprive me of the pension that I have been working for 35 years to receive. He can stay in New Hampshire for all I care. The people of NJ can handle this snow without him. He is a lying, greedy, obnoxious, overbearing hypocrite.

13

I think it’s disingenuous to leave out “it’s ok to campaign for national office, but in a severe emergency that needs on going administrative oversight, you have to go home, even if it hurts your campaign, and it’s unseemly to complain or resist this. Them’s the breaks”

I’ve no idea if that’s relevant here, but it’s a perfectly legit reading of the OP.

14

While it’s good for the opposing party if CC stayed away, it’s the 21st century. He doesn’t need to be in NJ to manage. It just looks good, and in politics, that’s what counts.

15

Christie is paid by the citizens of New Jersey. His responsibility, when one of the largest storms in East Coast history is predicted, is to serve his citizenry, not the .0005% of possible voters in New Hampshire. Take a look at his Tweets from last Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday to gain a sense of what he really thinks is important (it ain’t Jersey).

As requested, some cites about Christie’s reluctance to actually be in the state he’s paid to govern. He has a long history of “calling it in” and being in DisneyLand (literally) when he should be at the helm:

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/23/nyregion/in-word-and-deed-christies-ambitions-shrink-at-home-amid-white-house-bid.html?_r=0

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/01/2016-snow-storm-chris-christie-218106

Not that I think he’s actually deploying snowplows and shoveling the walk of the capitol building, he can phone-in directives to departments. It’s his breathtaking arrogance – and, in the larger schema, absence of the will to address some of NJ’s overwhelming issues. Read these links. He’s en absentia a LOT and it’s often in service of his personal and political ambitions.

For further support of my claims, search NPR for last week’s report on Christie’s cavorting with the Dallas Cowboys’ owner. I won’t recite it here, but it underlines his lack of ethical sense.

I live in the suburbs of Trenton, which is the state capital of New Jersey. One of the worst slums and some of the most desperate and under-served people in the U.S. are cheek-by-jowl with Christie’s office; he made a lot of election promises about cleaning up Trenton and Camden and Newark. If anything, Trenton has declined even more and Christie’s office gives him a birds-eye view of the rot (when he deigns to be in his office), so it’s not some abstract situation he reads about from his office in Princeton: He stands on the rotunda balcony and proclaims “Let them eat cake!” (For the more literal-minded among us: I know this Marie-Antoinette story is apocryphal, this is illustrative metaphor).

I actually liked the guy when he first took office, and I’m a lefty. I liked his forthright manner, his articulation of the challenges the State faces, and some of his plans. Too bad he turned out to be such a shitheel.

16

This. Thank you.

17

He’s well-paid to do a job. When he got here did he do much beyond declare a state of emergency and give interviews in his snow-fleece jacket? No.

But he’s paid to be the governor and his flabby butt needs to be sitting in a chair in Trenton.

18

Hi Bricker: a little bit of all. I posted some links about CC’s frequent absences below.

I like the questions you pose, you’ve got me thinking about bigger issues re: sitting politicians and campaigning. I’m curious about your thoughts on these questions – do you mind posting them?

BTW, I’m a lefty but voted for CC.

19

Unfortunately, my own opinions are absolutely unworkable from a practical sense.

But since you ask: from a regulatory perspective, I wouldn’t change a thing – the voters should decide what constitutes dereliction.

But here’s what I wish the voters did: I wish they would absolutely deny someone who campaigned for any office other than his own the chance to obtain it. In other words, I would like to see the voters treat Christie’s behavior as an absolute disqualification. I have never understood why we are so sanguine about a supposedly full time political office holder undertaking a more-than-full-time campaign for another office. Serve your office well, build a record, and then run for a new office when your current term is over.

Widespread acceptance of this would require more staggered election cycles.

This is obviously so far outside mainstream thought that it is essentially irrelevant to the real world.

But you asked! :slight_smile:

20

This is the thinking your initial response prompted for me. I would also like to see the same thing. The ability for current office holders to divert their efforts to campaigning for other jobs has always seemed to be deeply odd and unethical in many ways.

But, as you say, this seems to be waaaay outside what most folks think.