Another candidate with a lot to gain is piling on Iowa frontrunner Ted Cruz: The nation’s largest governor, Chris Christie. Although the Garden State borders New York, it’s major cities make up what is referred to broadly as the tri-state area, and millions of Jerseyites commute to New York City each day for work. Christie is also a lifelong New York Mets fan. Needless to say, he was not happy with Ted Cruz, and painted the Texas Senator as disingenuous when given the opportunity.
New Jersey Governor Chris Christie joined the throng condemning Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX)97 after he criticized “New York values” in the Fox Business debate.
“I think it was a very, very ill-advised thing for Ted to say,” Christie said in an interview with TIME. “You want to be President of the United States, you have to unite this country. And for him to somehow be implying that certain values are more appropriate, more American, depending upon what region of the country you’re from, is to me just asinine.”
But Christie had additional criticism for Cruz, painting him as an inside politician with Washington D.C. values and an Ivy League education.
“I think Ted once again is trying to be Mr. Ivy League cute. He’s Harvard and Princeton, he’s federal court clerkships, he’s government jobs, and somehow he’s an outsider?” Christie asked. “If you took his name off and you put that résumé down, that would look like the consummate Washington insider.”
Christie has a lot to gain, as would be frontrunner Marco Rubio has failed to gain the momentum many anticipated he would after the last several debates. Some have suggested that the Rubio “moment.” is nothing more than a whole lot of wishful thinking on the establishment’s part.
Meanwhile, conservative columnist George Will has suggested that Christie provides a more electable alternative to the amnesty and sugar subsidy loving Rubio. Will notes:
In 2012, Republicans nominated a northeastern blue-state governor, with unsatisfactory results. Christie, however, might be an un-Romney, connecting viscerally with voters — especially whites without college educations — who in 2012 stayed away from the polls in droves.
Christie will campaign in Iowa for nine days before the Feb. 1 caucuses. If they yield a cloudy result — say, the top four finishers clustered within four points — New Hampshire will become the scythe that reduces the field. Christie plans to be “the last governor standing” when, after South Carolina at the latest, he expects former Govs. Mike Huckabee and Jeb Bush and current Gov. John Kasich to join current and former Govs. Scott Walker, Rick Perry, Bobby Jindal, George Pataki and Jim Gilmore on the sidelines.
As chairman of the Republican Governors Association in 2014, Christie campaigned frenetically, dispersing more than $100 million as 17 Republican governors were re-elected and seven new ones were elected. So far, only four governors have endorsed candidates: Alabama’s Robert Bentley supports Kasich, Arkansas’s Asa Hutchinson supports Huckabee, Maryland’s Larry Hogan and Maine’s Paul LePage support Christie. So, 24 Republican governors, many of them indebted to Christie and all of them disposed to admire executives, have political muscles to flex.
It’s easy to see why Christie is stepping it up. Whether or not he’ll be successful is another story.
AAN Staff
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