By Matt Rooney | The Save Jersey Blog
The world is on fire, Save Jerseyans. In case you hadn’t noticed.
My fellow Americans seemed distressingly willing to give President Obama a partial pass on Libya and Syria since that portion of the globe is constantly inflamed and, after all, it’s clearly a product of George Bush’s instigation. Right?
Unfortunately for the DNC and DCCC, the unchecked resurgence of Russian territorial ambitions is a little harder to push off on their leader’s predecessor. There isn’t an American alive who can remember a peaceful Middle East. Most Americans (myself included) can remember watching the Berlin Wall crumble on live television.
Ronald Reagan liberated Eastern Europe. Barack Obama is giving it back.
Obvious points aside, our President’s weakness could be an opportunity for more than just the Putin. There’s a potential silver-lining for the GOP primary field’s hobbled former front runner, too…
Governor Chris Christie built his brand as a tough guy who bullied bullies. Corrupt politicians. Labor fat cats. Powerful journalists. A strong majority of Republican, Independents and even Democrats ate it up. It all began right here with a now-infamous video of Tom Moran being dressed-down for his thin-skinned reporting.
The Gov’s alleged “bullying” is decidedly less popular as of late.
Bridgegate, Sandy-gate, and an number of second-tier scandals (real or manufactured) have reinforced negative New Jersey stereotypes in the minds of many would-be Christie 2016 supporters while giving base Democrats, loathe to hate a Republican who rips other Republicans, the excuse they need to bolt his coalition and enthusiastically embrace the presumptive Democrat nominee Hillary “Hilldawg” Clinton. The latest polling results are extremely preemptive but not exactly inspiring.
The good news for Christie? If current trends persist, then America might be ready for a bully by 2016.
I’d like to tell you that Barack Obama’s own polling is tumbling solely because his former supporters are rejecting his bogus ideas. Unfortunately it’s even a little a more simple than that. He’s weak, and even in our age of postmodern masculinity, that’s a turn-off for many voters. Americans don’t like to feel like we’re not in control of events, and at the present time, China and Russia certainly appear to be in the driver’s seat.
From the streets of Benghazi to the halls of the Kremlin, our enemies are laughing at us and operating under the assumption that it’s okay to act out because America and it’s moribund European allies have absolutely no will to do anything to stop them. We had nonmilitary options. Obama elected instead to “sanction” seven dudes? You know it’s bad when The New Yorker is busting his chops over it…
Governor Christie could provide the ultimate contrast to our current weak and vacillating commander-in-chief, and contrast is everything in politics.
Do the exercise by yourself for a moment: if you had to go into a room to face-down Putin, who would you want at your side?
Rand Paul? Hillary Clinton? Or Chris Christie?
Exactly.
None of this is intended as a knock on Senator Paul. I might turn out to be a typical base voter in this respect. We’ll see. Overall, I like Rand Paul quite a bit. On the domestic front, my views are probably more closely aligned to his than Governor Christie’s. Especially as of late!
However, with all of that being said, I’m not at all down with the disturbing isolationist streak which seems to dominate contemporary libertarian thinking. I’ve consistently criticized Rand’s father’s historically-bankrupt worldview, and Ron’s shocking indifference to Russia’s Crimean annexation – all despite clear parallels to the start of the last world war – is hard to comprehend coming from a man who is clearly intelligent albeit a bit eccentric.
I, for one, need to know whether Rand is going to be a realist like Reagan or an isolationist like his pop before I consider pulling the lever for him.
I’m betting (without having any way to predict the future) that many fellow base primary voters who don’t appreciate Chris Christie’s ideological indiscretions (e.g. Internet sales taxes, the N.J. Dream Act, Common Core) might nevertheless give him a second look come Winter 2016 if the world doesn’t stabilize and none of the hypothetical GOP field’s non-executive participants demonstrate that they possess the mettle to put Vladimir back in his place.
It worked with the commies over at the NJEA front office. Why not an ambitious former KGB agent?
>> if you had to go into a room to face-down Putin, who would you want at your side?
>> Rand Paul? Hillary Clinton? Or Chris Christie?
I’ll take the Door #1, thank you. Let thugs kill other thugs all around the globe, while we are selling them as much outdated firearms and ammo as our industrial capacity allows.
That’d be nice and neat but it’s not reality. Eventually, the emboldened thugs come for us.
For decades, we were so busy getting rid of foreign tyrants that we let the domestic variety take hold of the country. Let’s restore our freedoms first, and then take care of Ukrainians.
A superpower should be able to handle both challenges at once with the right leadership. We managed it for most of the 20th century.
In case you didn’t notice, we had no “right” leadership for quite a while. And don’t even start me on the rest of the 20th century: I doubt any Middle Eastern kinglet would be capable of causing as much damage to the country’s Constitutional core and individual freedoms as Wilson and FDR.