Christie's Bridge

   Is it just me? No. It's the 24 hour total news cycles on far too many networks. Laziness and cost analysis vs actual old-school journalism. A local newspaper cracked the story, the e-mails are leaked, the Governor is firing people and making apologies. There may possibly be more to the story, but until there is, we'll be getting more of the same thing, over and over and over...

  But the heart of the story, the thing that makes it a story, is what affect it will have on Christie's chances in the 2016 presidential campaign. I'll tell you right now. The affect is zero.  There are several reasons possible as to why.

  1. The electorate, particularly the GOP, is very forgetful. By the time the political season starts heating up in anticipation of the Iowa straw polls, the details of this fiasco will be swept under the rug.

  2. Those that will remember will be very forgiving considering that to them the only issue of any bearing is to defeat whatever "godless commie" the Dems will put up.

  3. And most importantly, Christie never had a chance in the first place, and likely was smart enough to know not to even bother to run. He's thought of as a "moderate" among Republicans, and in the current vernacular, to the GOP, he probably is. But he isn't. Not in any real sense of the word. Yet, he's "moderate" enough to lose support from the true believers in the furthest fringes of the party. And those furthest fringes are what control the message of the party. And the bifurcation of the GOP won't let him run to the right or to the middle.

  He's going to have to couch his rhetoric to different tones to different groups, and that kills his image of the shoot from the hip guy that tells it like it is. Which, BTW is nothing but image. He's both the beneficiary and the hostage of his own bluster. And I'm pretty sure he knows it. And I make this prediction. He won't run.

  The bridge controversy pretty much kills any thought he may have had. But the truth is, he was never going to run in the first place. He can make his amends to the State of New Jersey, maybe. He may be able to heal the wounds and save his governorship. Even that is touch and go now. But he can do the national math. That was never in his grasp in the first place.

  He may even make a play at Iowa, or New Hampshire, but it will be halfhearted. There will be financial backers that may insist he show up. He will be trounced before he gets out of the gate. The GOP is not in the mood to award or encourage "moderates" after Mitt Romney. They will go down in flames, but they will fall on their glorious sword with a true believer. Nuttiness will rule the day, and we're looking at an assured GOP defeat.

  Forget the current polls. The front-runners going into Iowa will be Rick Santorum, Rand Paul, and Paul Ryan. And if the GOP decides to not go full blown "Ray Comfort" (look it up) , it will be John Kasich, who scares me more than any of the others.

   Richard Cohen seems to agree:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/richard-cohen-christies-tea-party-problem/2013/11/11/a1ffaa9c-4b05-11e3-ac54-aa84301ced81_story.html