-By Warner Todd Huston
New Jersey Governor Chris Christie is in a bit of a pickle this month over a scandal that Democrats claim he created. But conservatives are none too interested in coming to Christie’s support any time soon and he’ll have to address this all on his own. Has Chris Christie come to the end of his status as Republican hero?
Christie is under the gun for decisions by his close staffers to initiate a “traffic study” that snarled traffic on the George Washington Bridge in September of last year. Democrats say that Christie’s folks did this to inconvenience Fort Lee Mayor Mark Sokolich, a Democrat and Christie detractor.
Some might easily agree with the Democrats’ claim about the punitive nature of the traffic study, too, with a series of snarky emails from Christie’s people that made light of the discomfort of all the citizens that were inconvenienced on the road.
Governor Christie is steadfastly claiming that he knows nothing about the actions of his subordinates. Of course, if the Governor is telling the truth and he didn’t really know anything, heads will roll in New Jersey and some have already resigned.
In fact Christie has already fired the aide responsible and claims he is going to apologize in person to the town his staff inconvenienced.
But beyond all that, conservatives are certainly not happy with Republican Chris Christie and therefore are willing to sit by and watch him twist with this scandal without much coming to his aide.
Christie has not been a fan of the tea party, he is soft on the Second Amendment, soft on gay marriage, soft on immigration, and his famous hug with Barack Obama during the response to Hurricane Sandy is infamous with conservatives.
Everyone is speculating that Christie will seek the Republican nomination for President in 2016. This would fit in with his past career of job jumping to advance his status and career, so it would not be unexpected if he did jump in.
But if Chris Christie runs for president he will likely run as a moderate and run against conservatives and tea partiers.He has already made too many statements against conservatives to run as one of them and at this point conservatives will not accept him regardless.
The fact is, conservatives would not be heart broken if this bridge scandal hurt Chris Christie enough to keep him out of national politics.
