Friday, July 26, 2013

Christie Challenges GOP Park-Your-Heart Politics

If nothing else, Chris Christie will be pumping blood into hardened Republican arteries between now and November 2016.

Naming Rand Paul among “any number of people” who project a “dangerous strain” of libertarianism on domestic surveillance, the Governor cites families in his state who lost loved ones on 9/11:

“These esoteric, intellectual debates--I want them to come to New Jersey and sit across from the widows and the orphans and have that conversation. And they won’t, because that’s a much tougher conversation to have...

“The next attack that comes, that kills thousands of Americans as a result, people are going to be looking back on the people having this intellectual debate and wondering whether they put...”

Christie cut himself off, but his comments at an Aspen Institute panel of GOP governors challenge his party’s herd mentality on Obama-bashing, bringing up George W. Bush.

The policy the current President is following, he told them, “hasn’t been different because they [sic] were right and because we haven’t had another one of those attacks that cost thousands and thousands of lives.”

As Republicans "nerve up" to shut down government over Obamacare and the debt ceiling, Christie offers a glimpse of an alternative to another 2016 kamikaze campaign for the White House.

How far he can go in primaries like those of the last presidential election where ideological purity reigned is open to question, but his bluntness is a promising sign.

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