god damn this guy is fat.

so does he run or doesn't he run?

the only place his fat ass is running is to the fridge

he's always said he's waiting for 2016 at the earliest, but i kinda hope he runs just so he'll get the fuck outa my state. this guy's terrible.

he just pretty much categorically denied he would run this year at the reagan library in a speech tonight

why do you think he's terrible?

William Taft Dislikes this

his stance on teacher unions, state debt, etc. his fat ass talks about how everyone needs to be willing to make personal sacrafices to improve the state, then takes a state owned helicopter to watch his kid play baseball. he's an arrogant blowhard.

I think he paid for the helicopter ride.

teacher unions are awful, no idea about the helicopter trip but his brother is worth $100+ million so i'm guessing the family paid for it

I agree with the guy that the helicopter thing was just media crap, and I pretty much agree with everything that he says about it here:

do you really think he was gonna pay back that $ w/o everyone in the state bitching about it?

of course it's just political theater, who cares. nobody criticizes the president for taking a helicopter on personal trips. it comes with the job. it's totally irrelevant and used by liberal groups to paint him as an out of touch bigwig.

i think chris christie is pretty much exactly what the country needs. he understands the fiscal mess and isn't a religious zealot. a northeast, yankee, republican. but that would be hard to get through the gop primary system.

“I’m governor 24/7, every single day. But I’m also a father. And the fact of the matter is sometimes when you’re governor, you do not control your schedule,” he explained. “And so, if you want to try to do all the things that people want you to do as governor and also be a father… There are times when it is literally impossible to do that by car, and two of those instances came up in the last week.”

As a taxpayer, I have no problem with this...

Yes, all that holds New Jersey back is a teacher's union with too little influence, a state balance sheet with too little debt, and the exorbitant price of helicopter transport.

You left out those kids from Jersey Shore!

I would definitely prefer Christie to anyone else in the GOP field at the moment. Whether or not I'd vote for him over Obama I'm not sure about just yet.

I was listening to liberal radio this morning (why I don't know) and they couldn't stop talking about how fat the guy is and whether that would make him a less effective President. I guess that's what I get for turning on liberal radio. I do wonder whether a guy like Christie is what people in other countries picture when they think of an American politician. Sort of a fulfilling the stereotype kind of thing.

teacher's unions lol

Christie, Unscripted, Unpredictable G.O.P. Hope
By MICHAEL D. SHEAR
Published: September 30, 2011

Ask Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey whether his ample weight is a political asset or an election-year liability, and the governor of New Jersey shrugs.

“It depends on the day,” Mr. Christie said earlier this year, noting that his visible struggles with girth could add to his “everyman” appeal or could be a voter turnoff. “Some days it may be an asset and some days it may be a liability.”

That may be the best way to describe everything about Mr. Christie as he considers the entreaties of donors urging him to make a late entry into an unsettled field of candidates vying for the Republican presidential nomination.

A first-term governor whose paucity of government experience may be just what the doctor ordered, Mr. Christie is a jumble of political contradictions. He’s a conservative with some liberal views, a bullying New Jersey politician who frequently talks about compromise, and an obviously reluctant candidate who clearly hears the siren song of the national stage.

All of which presents opportunities and hurdles for Mr. Christie and his cadre of advisers to mull over while the primary clock ticks down. For the moment, no one knows what Mr. Christie will decide, but everyone is trying to figure out how a presidential campaign based in Trenton might look.

“If Christie is the super politician his encouragers present, he should have the nomination locked up by mid-February,” quipped Jim Dyke, an unaligned Republican strategist. But he said Mr. Christie’s record “will offer insights, contradictions and surprises — all of which will sustain or destroy him depending on how he handles them.”

Say Anything

How Mr. Christie handles things may be his biggest selling point. In an era when people say they are tired of slick, preprogrammed politicians who faithfully repeat a focus-group-tested message, the New Jersey governor is anything but.

With Hurricane Irene bearing down on his state’s coastline, he bellowed “get the hell off the beach!” He waved off criticism of his use of a state helicopter to go to his son’s baseball game as “silliness.” (Though he later reimbursed the state for its use.) His gubernatorial vocabulary regularly includes the words “stupid,” “crap,” and “insane.”

He is the anti-Mitt Romney; totally unprogrammed or scripted. And with Mr. Romney the one to beat in the Republican primary, there may be no better time for an alternative like Mr. Christie.

“Polls show people are really frustrated with Washington right now,” said Scott Reed, who managed Bob Dole’s presidential campaign in 1996. “A little straight talk will go a long way.”

Mr. Christie also can brag about a record of accomplishment in New Jersey that is squarely in the area most Americans say they care about: spending cuts, taxes, debt, regulations and jobs.

But there are also big challenges for Mr. Christie if he wants to seriously compete for the Republican nomination, and potentially, the White House. Chief among them may be the same willingness to say whatever comes into his mouth.

Too Liberal?

Mr. Christie also has a record of some rather moderate positions that could be problematic in a Republican nominating fight.

He is on record acknowledging the “undeniable” science behind the idea that climate change is caused by human behavior, saying global warming is “real and it is impacting our state.”

When Jon S. Corzine, the former Democratic governor of New Jersey, accused him in 2009 of standing with the National Rifle Association, Mr. Christie’s campaign called that a “lie” and touted his support of the federal assault weapons ban. “Hardly the N.R.A. position,” his literature said.

In 2008, as a federal prosecutor, Mr. Christie spoke what could be considered blasphemy among conservatives: “Being in this country without proper documentation is not a crime,” he said. “The whole phrase of ‘illegal immigrant’ connotes that the person, by just being here, is committing a crime.”

And when Tea Party conservatives were up in arms about a mosque near ground zero, he accused them of overreacting.

Mr. Christie’s advisers need only look to the recent coverage of his fellow governor, Rick Perry of Texas, for evidence that straying from the conservative line in the current political climate can have a decidedly negative impact on a presidential campaign.

Mr. Christie might try to mitigate some of the apostasy by returning to his trademark bluntness and declaring that voters should take him or leave him the way he is. But like Senator John McCain of Arizona, who battled conservatives for years, that only goes so far, especially with the die-hard activists who vote in primary elections.

His less conservative positions might help him in a general election against President Obama. And his straightforward style might contrast well with the coolness of the president.

Raising Money

But if he gets in, Mr. Christie will have to explain his repeated insistence that he is not ready to serve in the White House. “You have to believe, as I’ve said before, in your heart and in your mind that you’re ready,” he told The Times in February. “And I don’t believe that I am.”

He will also immediately face the challenge of raising money. The excitement among some very wealthy donors suggests that might not be too difficult. But running for president requires a large fund-raising organization and Mr. Christie would start millions of dollars behind his rivals.

Right away, Mr. Christie and his campaign advisers would face the challenge of his schedule. Every day that he spends on the phone with donors is a day he’s not spending in Iowa, New Hampshire or South Carolina — places that his potential rivals have been visiting regularly for weeks.

And then there is the question of his temperament.

Too Combative?

For many people around the country (more than one million, according to YouTube), the image they have seen of a combative and feisty Mr. Christie at a town hall meeting, speaking bluntly to a teacher who stood up to accuse him of lambasting the profession.

“If what you want to do is put on a show and giggle every time I talk, well then I have no interest in answering your question,” Mr. Christie said.

In another exchange captured on video, a woman asked why Mr. Christie sends his children to private, not public, schools.

“Hey Gail, you know what? First off, it’s none of your business,” a clearly ticked off governor answered. “I don’t ask you where you send your kids to school. Don’t bother me about where I send mine.”

The question is whether those kinds of moments still seem like a breath of fresh air if they happen repeatedly on the campaign trail. One senior Republican strategist who is backing a current candidate questioned whether voters won’t get tired of Mr. Christie’s combative, stubborn routine.

“If you take the confrontational style all day, every day, I don’t know how that wears,” said the strategist, who requested anonymity because he was not authorized by the campaign to speak about Mr. Christie. “Is unvarnished what people really want?”

People close to the New Jersey governor say his political range is wider than that. And in one popular video, it is.

After an Internet video of a 4-year-old boy named Jesse crying because he wanted to be governor of New Jersey went viral, a jovial and easygoing Mr. Christie signed a proclamation in April making the young man governor for a day.

Maybe Mr. Christie knew something about his future way back then.



god damn this video is fantastic

Nice post Given. I like Christie. I don't think he should waste his time running for president though. I live in NJ. I'd rather have him here cleaning up the mess of this state.

Nice post.

You have a tall skinny guy and a shorter fat guy the tall skinny guy wins regardless of their platforms.