{"id":182687,"date":"2015-07-01T18:27:00","date_gmt":"2015-07-01T23:27:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2015\/07\/01\/the-clown-car-gets-bigger-a-lot-bigger\/"},"modified":"2015-07-01T18:27:00","modified_gmt":"2015-07-01T23:27:00","slug":"the-clown-car-gets-bigger-a-lot-bigger","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2015\/07\/01\/the-clown-car-gets-bigger-a-lot-bigger\/","title":{"rendered":"The Clown Car Gets Bigger, a Lot Bigger"},"content":{"rendered":"
Jabba the Governor, AKA Chris Christie, has announced his candidacy for the Presidency<\/a>:<\/div>\n

Gov. Chris Christie declared an uphill candidacy for president on Tuesday with New Jersey-style swagger, unconcealed disgust for Washington and a high regard for his own candor, vowing that \u201cthere is one thing you will know for sure: I say what I mean and I mean what I say.\u201d<\/span>

<\/span> Relying on his biggest, and perhaps his last, remaining advantage in a field of better-financed and better-liked rivals \u2014 his personality \u2014 Mr. Christie portrayed himself as the only candidate in the Republican field who is forthright and forceful enough to run the country.<\/span>

<\/span> \u201cWe need strength and decision-making and authority back in the Oval Office,\u201d he said.<\/span>

<\/span> Pacing the stage without a prepared text and raising his voice to a shout at times, he vowed to campaign and govern as a colorful teller of difficult truths, even if \u201cit makes you cringe every once in a while.<\/span>\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The unfortunate part about his role as self-proclaimed truth teller, is that no one buys it any more:<\/p>\n

After 14 years of watching Christie, a warning: He lies<\/span><\/b><\/a><\/span>

<\/span> Tom Moran | Star-Ledger Editorial Board<\/span>

<\/span> Most Americans don’t know Chris Christie<\/a> like I do, so it’s only natural to wonder what testimony I might offer after covering his every move for the last 14 years.<\/span>

<\/span> Is it his raw political talent? No, they can see that.<\/span>

<\/span> Is it his measurable failure to fix the economy, solve the budget crisis or even repair the crumbling bridges? No, his opponents will cover that if he ever gets traction.<\/span>

<\/span> My testimony amounts to a warning: Don’t believe a word the man says.<\/span>

<\/span> If you have the stomach for it, this column offers some greatest hits in Christie’s catalog of lies.<\/span>

<\/span> Don’t misunderstand me. They all lie, and I get that. But Christie does it with such audacity, and such frequency, that he stands out.<\/span>

<\/span> He’s been lying on steroids lately, on core issues like Bridgegate, guns and that cozy personal friendship with his buddy, the King of Jordan. I’ll get to all that.<\/span>

<\/span> But let’s start with my personal favorite. It dates back to the 2009 campaign, when the public workers unions asked him if he intended to cut their benefits.<\/span>

<\/span> He told them their pensions were “sacred” to him.<\/span>

<\/span> “The notion that I would eliminate, change, or alter your pension is not only a lie, but cannot be further from the truth,” he wrote<\/a> them. “Your pension and benefits will be protected when I am elected governor.”<\/span>

<\/span> He then proceeded to make cutting those benefits the centerpiece of his first year <\/a>in office.<\/span>

<\/span> This, we know now, was vintage Christie. Other lying politicians tend to waffle, to leave themselves some escape hatch. You can almost smell it.<\/span>

<\/span> But Christie lies with conviction. His hands don’t shake, and his eyes don’t wander. I can hardly blame the union leaders who met with him for believing him.<\/span>

<\/span> \u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span>

<\/span> And that’s my warning to America. When Christie picks up the microphone, he speaks so clearly and forcefully that you assume genuine conviction is behind it.<\/span>

<\/span> Be careful, though. It’s a kind of spell.<\/span>

<\/span> He is a remarkable talent with a silver tongue. But if you look closely, you can see that it is forked like a serpent’s.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Admittedly, this is just The Largest Newspaper in the State of New Jersey<\/span><\/b> saying this, and who reads the papers these days.<\/p>\n

However, the New York Times<\/i>, which is where the Sunday morning gasbags get their talking points, said the same thing<\/a>, though they did not use the word “Lie” because they are such delicate flowers:<\/p>\n

On his new website, Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey portrays himself as a guy who gets attacked for \u201ctelling it like it is,\u201d but that\u2019s what his mom told him to do from her deathbed.<\/p>\n

It is part of the legend Mr. Christie has carefully cultivated for many years, with startling success. He is described as \u201cbrash\u201d and \u201cbold,\u201d with a certain rough charisma that his political opponents just cannot handle. \u201cI get accused a lot of times of being too blunt and too direct and saying what\u2019s on my mind just a little bit too loudly,\u201d he says in the first video for his presidential campaign, showing him with a selected group of adoring voters.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s fundamentally nonsense. There are lines between brash and belligerent, between open and obnoxious, and, most important, between \u201ctelling it like it is\u201d and not telling the truth. Mr. Christie crosses those lines all the time, as Tom Moran, the editorial page editor of The Star-Ledger of Newark, documented in a blistering column <\/a>about Mr. Christie\u2019s \u201ccatalog of lies.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/p>\n

Expect to see a lot of Mr. Christie at those phony \u201ctown hall\u201d meetings, staged with selected supporters. You will hear a lot about his common touch, his \u201cstraight talk\u201d and his love for Bruce Springsteen.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a smoke screen. Look behind it at the governor whose own constituents say by an overwhelming majority that he has done a bad job, should not run for the White House and would make a bad president.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I don’t think that I’ve ever<\/b> seen the New York Times<\/i> editorial board gone after an American with such vehemence.<\/p>\n

The media’s man crush on Chris Christie is over. <\/p>\n

His brand of “straight talk” has gone from an asset to a joke line.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jabba the Governor, AKA Chris Christie, has announced his candidacy for the Presidency: Gov. Chris Christie declared an uphill candidacy for president on Tuesday with New Jersey-style swagger, unconcealed disgust for Washington and a high regard for his own candor, vowing that \u201cthere is one thing you will know for sure: I say what I …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[970,969,1051,977,1019],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-182687","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-corruption","category-evil","category-hypocrisy","category-presidential-campaign","category-schadenfreude"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182687"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=182687"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182687\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=182687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=182687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=182687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}