"It’s almost sad that every time Republicans get behind a candidate, that candidate seems to implode. Almost, but not quite." Too bad, so sad....

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As the Political World Turns
By Charles M. Blow, January 8, 2014

Well, that didn’t take long.

After wall-to-wall Obamacare disaster ruminations, the terrain of the political landscape is shifting, as it always does, and refocusing attention on some familiar themes.

The larger-than-life, straight-from-the-hip, quick-with-the-tongue paladin of the Palisades, Chris Christie, is beginning to emerge as small, petty and vindictive.

In September, several lanes of the George Washington Bridge were closed, grinding traffic to a halt in the town of Fort Lee, N.J., whose mayor just so happened to have refused to endorse Christie for re-election. In fact, The Record reported yesterday that the EMS coordinator for the borough, Paul Favia, detailed to the mayor of Fort Lee four medical situations in which emergency responders were delayed because of the traffic gridlock.

One was particularly disturbing:

“It also took EMS seven minutes to reach an unconscious 91-year-old woman who later died of cardiac arrest at a hospital. Although he did not say her death was directly caused by the delays, Favia noted that ‘paramedics were delayed due to heavy traffic on Fort Lee Road and had to meet the ambulance en-route to the hospital instead of on the scene.'”

Christie denied involvement in the closings. In fact, when the governor was questioned about it last month, he laughed it off, saying: “I worked the cones actually. Unbeknownst to everybody, I was actually the guy out there. I was in overalls and a hat, but I was the guy working the cones.” Ha, ha. That was hilarious. Until it wasn’t. Until emails emerged Wednesday that painted a rather disturbing picture of involvement by people in his office.

In one email, Christie’s deputy chief of staff for legislative and intergovernmental affairs, Bridget Anne Kelly, wrote, “Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee.” And the emails get worse from there. While it’s not clear whether Christie himself was involved with the closings, the emails strike uncomfortably close to home.

It’s almost sad that every time Republicans get behind a candidate, that candidate seems to implode. Almost, but not quite. After Christie’s impressive re-election in November, media folks fawned over him as if he were a newborn panda. He was the reincarnation of Jack Kemp, with an acerbic side, the embodiment of the “Spirit of Sandy,” the bipartisan Pied Piper. Praise upon praise.

The utterly unearned accolades and the Republican thirst for a winner after two defeats at the hands of the much-reviled President Obama pushed Christie out front in the ridiculously premature horse-race prognostication for 2016. A Quinnipiac University poll last month even had Christie besting Hillary Clinton in a hypothetical 2016 head-to-head matchup.

Hillary the Invincible. Hillary the Inevitable. Hillary “It’s Her Turn” Clinton. The woman whose super PAC “Ready for Hillary” this week said that it had raised $4 million last year for her highly anticipated run. The woman who, according to Gallup, has been the “Most Admired Woman” 17 of the last 20 years. (Mother Teresa beat her in two years and Laura Bush edged her out one year.) That Hillary.

Christie issued a statement on Wednesday saying he was “outraged and deeply saddened” and that he had been “misled” by a member of his staff, and that “this completely inappropriate and unsanctioned conduct was made without my knowledge.” Sure, Governor. He finished, “This behavior is not representative of me or my administration in any way, and people will be held responsible for their actions.” So, in other words, someone else has to take the fall for this. Maybe that’ll be the end of it. We’ll see.

While we wait, the Obama administration and Democratic causes are beginning to look less gloomy. Private sector hiring in December was reportedly higher than it had been since November 2012. According to The Wall Street Journal:

“Private-sector payrolls increased by 238,000 positions in December, according to the national employment report compiled by payroll processor Automatic Data Processing Inc. and forecasting firm Moody’s Analytics.”

Democrats are pressing their income inequality message on several fronts, including moving to vote on extending long-term unemployment for three more months. It’s by no means clear that the measure will pass, particularly not without budgetary offsets that some Republicans are demanding. But these income inequality issues do resonate with voters. And as we observed the 50th anniversary of the war on poverty, these issues take on added weight. They don’t have the same resonance as, say, gun rights, but if you lay enough of them end to end, they could go some distance.

Furthermore, the Affordable Care Act finished last year with a surge. As Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo tabulated on Dec. 31, “between 9 and 10 million people” now have health care coverage because of the Affordable Care Act. That number will only grow. If Republicans thought there was a backlash against the president after people lost health care plans they liked, that will be nothing compared to a backlash if these newly insured were stripped of insurance by a repeal of the law.

Even the sometimes salacious excerpts from the former defense secretary Robert Gates’s soon-to-be-released book, in which he criticizes the president, the vice president and Hillary Clinton, are not wholly negative for the White House. On one level it’s a glimpse of what happens when a “Team of Rivals” becomes of nest of vipers. On the other hand, painting the president as a man who is constantly questioning military commitment, always looking for a way out, and distrustful of the military brass doesn’t sound so negative to many of the president’s supporters. It sounds like the kind of leader they wanted.

This all goes to show just how fast the Washington soap opera can change its scripts and how ludicrous long-range predictions can be.
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