The anti-Christie forces have settled on a meme…
…and the meme is “bully.”
Which I think is an interesting word to use for a politician. “Bully” conjures up all the current anti-bullying campaigns that have to do with school and the playground, but politics is not the schoolyard nor are we children (we just act like them sometimes). “Bully” also plays on Christie’s bulk: the picture is of a big hulking nasty guy punching out the little kids.
But again, this is politics. Doesn’t the word also convey the idea that he’s not a wimp, that he’s a fighter? I’m talking about metaphors here, not reality; no one thinks Christie throws any literal punches. And of course, as a fat guy, Christie is actually the one who’s the more natural target of bullies—including his opponent in his first New Jersey governor’s race, Jon Corzine, whose bullying of Christie for being fat failed to win Corzine the election.
Daniel Henninger points out the contrast between the treatment of Christie for Bridegate and the winking at the far more serious bullying (although he doesn’t use that word) perpetrated by the Obama administration, Obama, and his underlings, as well as the left in general:
The Christie bonfire has burned for a week. In that same week, The Wall Street Journal reported that the FBI found nothing in the IRS’s targeting of conservative political groups that warrants criminal charges…
Thus, two of the most powerful public institutions in the U.S.””the FBI and the IRS””have concluded no harm, no foul, and the memory hole swallows the Obama administration’s successful kneecapping of the GOP’s most active members just as they prepared to participate in the 2012 presidential campaign. Many””ruined or terrified by the IRS probes””shut down. Mr. Obama won.
One may be thankful that corners of the U.S. judiciary remain intact and unintimidated. Late last week, a judge in Wisconsin slowed down what was essentially a Democratic prosecutor’s star-chamber investigation of conservative groups that supported Republican Gov. Scott Walker. A special prosecutor armed with subpoena power had been poring over the groups’ finances, while a gag order stopped the groups from saying they were his targets.
On Friday, a court quashed some of the subpoenas for lack of probable cause. That’s good, but don’t expect to see Friends of Scott Walker going on offense any time soon. Legal pistol-whippings by state prosecutors can have that effect, win or lose.
As Henninger writes earlier in the piece, this sort of thing makes Chris Christie (and/or his aides) look like Little Bo Beep.
Note also how important the legal system and the courts are to the other stories Henninger points out. People often ignore the vast effect that judicial appointments have on the way things go, but they are vital. The more the left takes over that system, the more deeply entrenched leftist thought becomes. That is one of the main reasons that the Senate recently established simple majority approval for presidential appointments; they know how overwhelmingly important this is for their agenda. The left wrote the book on “bullying”—only that’s way too mild a word for it.
Sadly, I think does remove Christie from the national scene.
It might take a miracle for him to be seen in a positive light by the rest of the nation; we here in NJ, know all too well what the rest of the country thinks of us; so he had something of an uphill battle anyway.
Tyranny.
The anti-bullying campaign should thoroughly frighten us. It is massively underway, and will smother its opposition with its PC.
In my town, the school board’s manual has detailed bullying and its punishment without ever defining the word; this includes “cyberbullying” as a seriously punishable offense regardless of venue and time of transmission of the bullying message. So the schools and school board have extended their authority over students to 24/7/on and off site.
You’d best check your own ‘hoods.
The Christie “bullying” is just more grist for the thought polices’ mills.
No fan of Christie here. Still, the ones calling him a bully have nowhere to go with that. While I do believe Christie is a bully, they are actually better at it, in a worse way, than he and his machine is. That’s a lead balloon if I ever saw one. Won’t fly from the start.
The illicit media will wake up and try to resurrect Christie. In fact, it appears not to much damage has been done, but it always helps to be able to say one word and have the discussion stop. That’s only appropriate against bullies.
Christie (nee McCain) is the Democrat’s best candidate for 2016. They’ll eventually remember that and then they’ll be some “rethinking.” At least until after he gets the nomination.
It appears some sort of rethinking is already occurring by the carnivorous Charles Blow, a piece of rethinking not quite up to the level of resurrection but recognizing that bullying the bully isn’t working. So asserts Ann Althouse.
http://althouse.blogspot.com/2014/01/charles-blow-suddenly-perceives-that.html
Meanwhile, Rick Wilson at Richochet posits another label for Christie.
http://ricochet.com/main-feed/The-Acela-Republican
Remember when Hillary Clinton ran for the Senate, and during one of the debates, her male opponent walked towards her podium? The media made a big stink about his “intimidating” and “threatening” behavior towards that poor defenseless woman.
This is why I have always thought that Christie vs. Hillary would be a disaster. “Bully” would be the kindest term they would use.
Bullies are not fighters, they only appear to be because they only ‘fight’ those weaker than themselves. I suspect Christie is a blusterer.
When it comes to fighting, Mark Twain had the right of it, “It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog.”
A difficult lesson
The anti-Christie forces have settled on a meme……and the meme is “bully.”
To my way of thinking a bully is someone who gets all his opponents off the ballot so he can run unopposed.
[Yes, Neo, I know you have covered this, but this is the most quickly found link.]
Wow. The WaPo to Christie’s rescue. (Much earlier than I thought. It’ll be the NYT’s next.)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2014/01/16/how-chris-christie-can-still-be-the-frontrunner-for-the-2016-republican-nomination/
Gringo:
There has never been any question that Obama is a bully. And that’s one of the kinder things I could say about him.
The difference is that most people don’t perceive him that way. I’m not sure why, but one reason is that they haven’t done their homework on his past.
I propose a sumo match between CC and HRC, the winner gets to go mano a mano with the messiah.
There’s no question that Obama enjoys bullying people but perhaps another reason most people don’t perceive him that way is because he’s not a physically imposing man, there’s a kind of metro-sexuality about Obama. An asexuality about him? He’s not a man’s man. His masculinity is almost apologetic or absent? Am I imagining that?
The Vicious Party strikes again. And again. And again.
But…. Jimmy Kimmel did a rather hard-hitting opening monologue ridiculing Obamacare this week, and Jay Leno kicked the Dems and even their “god king” in the backside pretty hard as well.
Kimmel’s audience laughed freely. Sadly, Leno’s audience sounded like they were unsure whether they were Allowed to laugh at the Vicious Party.
How exactly are elections supposed to fix problems like this?
Some guy gets his head chopped off by the Left’s execution and rape squad, and we’re just going to “elect” his soul back into his body or something?
“The WaPo to Christie’s rescue.”
This is a McCain setup. They damage or subvert Party A. Then Push Party A to the front of the Republican primaries, thinking they have the goods or an October 2008 housing crash to seal the deal.
There’s no question Christie’s Obama embrace is the elephant in the room. It if wasn’t for that, many of us tea party persons could overlook at least the appearance of a pro-sharia platform, the institutionalization of Obamacare via Medicaid in New Jersey, the unnecessary denigration of libertarians (Rand) while seeming to hold a high regard for powerful Democrats, gun control, global warming, immigration . . . do I make a point? The Obama embrace isn’t the only elephant in the room. For all this, Christie maintains pragmatism in that he can only do certain things politically. But is that an answer on principle and platform?
http://conservativenewjersey.com/chris-christie-a-conservative-myth-exposed
The difference is that most people don’t perceive him that way. I’m not sure why, but one reason is that they haven’t done their homework on his past.
That may be because people haven’t called him by his real nature: a malignant sociopathic, psychopath and narcissist.
Who was that cannibal named, Jeffrey Dalmer something? Did he look like a big tough black guy of a bully? Probably not. Like the BTK killer, they look like normal neighbors. But are monsters.