Yea. I get annoyed with every scandal getting tied to Watergate (usually by tying a “-gate” suffix to it, presumably because the other party wants to make it seem like the same scale as Watergate).
But this is kinda Nixon-esque. Cristie had no chance of losing the '12 election. And having an opposition Governor most people have never heard of not endorse him wasn’t particularly important or unexpected.
But he doesn’t seem to have been able to help himself from going after the guy. And not only going after him, but doing so in such an over-the-top manner it would make Nucky Thompson blush.
I get that the odds of this being true are very small. I guess my question is, barring any further data to directly link him to this, does he get away with it unscathed by falling back on saying everything happened without his knowledge.
If he didn’t know about it until now, then either he didn’t bother to investigate something that negatively affected thousands of his constituents, or some of his closest aides lied to him about very important stuff. Either way, it torpedoes his presidential aspirations.
And he’s very lucky the election for governor was last year rather than this year. A recall may not be out of the question.
Of course he knew, underlings wouldn’t take it upon themselves to punish an adversary without telling him or without being ordered by him. There would be zero point to that.
CNN is now reporting that the traffic interfered with paramedics responding to a heart attack call. I think he’s toast in terms of further elected office, guessing he may be challenged to hold onto his governorship. (That’s how it looks from out here in Calif, at least, to me).
Don’t make too much of it. He won’t be forced out of office. It complicates future runs, but it doesn’t obviate them. He’s got a few years to prepare a reasonable answer/have someone fall on their sword to ease the pressure. Let’s watch the ‘ash heap of history’ attitudes. Nixon came back, after all. So did Marion Barry.
After many years of watching the body politic, I still am guilty of frequently overestimating the intelligence of the voting public. We will see. I’ve got to get one right, eventually.
Nixon came back after a narrow electoral defeat, not after a scandal. Marion Barry had the advantage of an electorate that simply didn’t care about his scandal. There still are a few acts to go in this play, but it’s inconceivable to me that Christie’s staff went rogue. My opinion is that he not only knew, he ordered it and someone died because of it.
Bob, I think Jonathon was referring to the “Checkers” speech in regards to Nixon, which predated his “won’t have me to kick around anymore” comment after the defeat.
I think an interesting question is this: If punitive actions were taken against a mayor that didn’t endorse Gov. Christie, were any “favors” done for other mayors that did?
Yeah, it’s surely what he referred to. So Nixon lost a close race and made a remark in haste that we had seen the last of him. Not a scandal. He came back from losing. Big whoop. How many times have people said “I’m not thinking about running” and then jump in? He said he wasn’t going to run again and did anyway. Hardly an epic comeback. Now if he had resigned after one term and then got elected, THAT would be an epic comeback. I think Christie coming back from this would be more significant than Nixon coming back into politics after his loss to Brown. .
Nixon didn’t come back after Watergate. And Marion Barry only had to win over people predisposed to thinking that whitey was giving him the shaft.
Even if Christie knew nothing about what his inner circle was doing for him, the fact remains that he hired the sorts of people who thought this was the sort of thing they should be doing for him. The Cossacks work for the Czar, and all that. And when the scandal broke a few weeks back, he clearly was in no hurry to get to the bottom of it and fire the miscreants.
Now he’s got one last chance: by COB tomorrow, the people who worked for him who planned this fiasco have to be out on the street. Because if, knowing what he knows now, he’s still not in any hurry to dump them, then he owns it.
But even then, I think it’s pretty clear to the world that he’s just another crooked Jersey politician. He may be able to ride out the storm and hang onto his governorship, but he can forget about the GOP nomination, let alone the White House.