Since last spring, I have been touting Chris Christie of New Jersey as the gutsiest governor in America — perhaps only until South Carolina elects Ms. Nikki Haley three weeks from tomorrow.
It has become a rule of index finger in recent years that when nasty reporting outruns objective reporting about a politician, it is frequently because he has offended entrenched, entitled interests, not because he has sinned.
And so it is with America’s new favorite roly-poly Irishman.
The New York Times lately has pursued Gov. Christie more vigorously than the American government chased John Wilkes Booth in the April of 1865.
Talking Back to Teachers
He busted a presumed agreement with the almighty teachers union of New Jersey the other month.
Look him up on YouTube. Watch him go one-on-one, against anybody.
I strongly encourage you to research him, as I have before. You may become a fan. His swift, logical, rational rhetoric when matched up against any Jersey audience — especially those deliciously entitled teachers — is akin to studying a magnificent piece of art. The aesthetics will make you quiver.
Since New Jersey is the fatherland of corrupt labor unions, you need no imagination to picture the patent leather foot-stomping of those immaculately arrogant teachers union leaders. Weeks later, they still are sulking and swearing revenge because that is what union leaders were born to do.
The hugely built Irishman, I promise, has put the ire back in IRE-land.
A Gutsy Call
But his enemies, and we are talking hard-faced lefties — therefore they are authentic enemies not effete paper-mache rivals — evidently subscribe to the Sisyphean theory. Those puerile boys must never learn. They took another licking over the weekend, and it was a delight to observe.
Last Thursday, Gov. Christie declared that he was canceling the largest public works plan in the land, an $8.7 billion tunnel project that would have speeded up passenger service from New Brunswick to 34th Street in Manhattan.
The common-sense reason: Inevitable cost over-runs would soak already burdened New Jersey voters between $2 billion and $5 billion more than already anticipated.
Even though the feds (that’s you and me, Murgatroyd) were picking up some of the tab, Gov. Christie said he was killing it because the $8.7 billion was likely to sky to $14billion —too much of a tax load to lay on gasping Jersey taxpayers.
“Bottom line,” said the governor, “New Jersey has gone too long and for too many decades ordering things they can’t pay for. “In the end, this is a financial decision.”
Taking Responsibility
This is one of the main planks that GOP candidates have been running on all summer and autumn, fiscal responsibility.
The elite reacted as if Gov. Christie had horsewhipped their sinful mothers in the town square. U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, one of the few GOPers in the Obama administration, was the first to file for divorce from rationality. He rang the governor’s telephone and “demanded” to talk to (not with) him. “Burble, burble,” were his first two words.
When I read about Mr. LaHood’s coarse heavy-handed, threat-laced call last Friday, I thought back to a graham cracker-strength speech Congressional candidate Karen Bass delivered the week before to the Culver City Chamber of Commerce. Termed out in Sacramento, the medium-mental speed Ms. Bass is a cinch to transfer her lacklustre portfolio to Washington next week. Here is why: Those ignorant Culver City/Los Angeles voters have been returning Diane the Disaster Watson to Congress for a decade without asking questions of accountability or accomplishment.
Congratulating the Chamber for having the foresight to endorse her, Ms. Bass promised the business audience she would reward their clinging faith by sending back federal dollars. That is the yardstick of success,
Which returns us to Mr. LaHood’s I Da Boss conversation with Gov. Christie. The well-named Washington bureaucrat — emphasis on the second syllable — sweetened his threats with promises to send even more federal dollars to Trenton.
Contemporary America has more left-wing commentators than bedbugs. Many were outraged. They said 6,000 construction jobs were going to be lost and precious federal dollars, already promised, would be lost. U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg, a New Jersey Democrat, said in an understated manner, “Killing the tunnel will go down as one of the worst policy blunders in New Jersey history.”
Ground was broken for the tunnel last year. Just a month ago, the governor ordered a temporary halt to spending on the tunnel while the state reviewed the costs. Originally pegged at $5 billion, the state found costs probably would go to between $11 billion and $14 billion. The governor swallowed hard.
Having spent the last 11 months building an outsized legend around himself, the governor reacted unChristie-like. Mr. LaHood applied searing pressure. Gov. Christie backed off, saying he would hold a final kill decision in abeyance for two weeks while Mr. LaHood’s alternative suggestions were studied.
Watch this one.
