Christie douses talk of beer summit with Paul

John Schoonejongen | Asbury Park (N.J.) Press

ASBURY PARK, N.J. -- America, are you ready for another beer summit?

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., seems to be, but his enthusiasm isn't shared by Republican New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, with whom the senator has been feuding over the past week.

Paul is proposing hoisting a brew with Christie in an effort to put their spat over national security issues to rest.

"I think with Governor Christie it's gotten a little too personal, so we're ready to kiss and make up," Paul told Fox News host Neil Cavuto on Wednesday afternoon.

"I'm inviting him for a beer," Paul said. "Any time he would like to come down and sit down at the pub right around the corner from the Senate, we'll have a beer."

But Christie rebuffed the offer during his monthly appearance on 101.5 FM radio's "Ask The Governor" program.

"I'm running for re-election in New Jersey. I don't really have time for that at the moment," Christie told host Eric Scott when asked about the beer summit. "You know, if I find myself down in Washington, I'll certainly look him up. I don't suspect I'll be there anytime soon. I've got work to do here."

Paul and Christie have been engaged in a weeklong war of words that began with Christie criticizing Paul over his statements that some domestic security efforts could violate citizens' rights to privacy.

"I mean, 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, 'cause that's a much tougher conversation to have," Christie said at a roundtable discussion in Aspen, Colo.

Paul responded forcefully.

"Chris Christie worries about the dangers of freedom. I worry about the danger of losing that freedom," Paul said in a post on his Facebook page. "Spying without warrants is unconstitutional."

The battle escalated, with Paul calling Christie the "king of bacon" for seeking federal aid to help the state recover from Superstorm Sandy. Christie retorted that New Jersey gives more in taxes than it receives in federal aid while Paul's Kentucky gets more than it gives.

Both men are considered strong contenders for the Republican nomination for president in 2016.

Christie didn't strike a conciliatory note during his radio appearance, even expressing bemusement over how the kerfuffle started in the first place.

"I don't know why Senator Paul is so out of whack about this," Christie said. "At the end of the day, I never called him any names, yet he called me names. I didn't use any childish-type phrases like 'gimme, gimme, gimme.' He did. And I just have to assume from that that he's just trying to get attention. That's fine. … He's not the first politician who's used me to get attention in the national media, and I'm sure he won't be the last."

Paul sounded bewildered over why Christie would go after those with libertarian thoughts on domestic surveillance issues.

"At times people have said Chris Christie has some libertarian leanings, so it's actually a little ironic that we see him criticizing libertarians in the party or libertarian influences because some libertarians actually had high hopes that he had some libertarian leanings," Paul told Cavuto.

The potential settling of dispute over beer is reminiscent of President Barack Obama inviting Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Cambridge police Sgt. James Crowley to the White House for a beer after Crowley's 2009 arrest of Gates led to claims of bigotry and racial profiling.

Paul admitted that he had not yet formally reached out to the governor with his offer for a beer.

"It hasn't been formalized," Paul told Cavuto. "I just thought of it, so we'll formalize it, and we'll put it in writing. But I think we could sit down and have a beer and mend things."