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New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie's presidential hopes could be tainted after Mitt Romney aides trashed him in the new book, "Double Down."

(AP photo)

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie has been crowned the last, best hope of the Republican Party in 2016.

He's brashly taken on

and

which nowadays qualifies him as a "moderate," the most meaningless word in the political lexicon.

That papers over the finer points of Christie's quite conservative record,

, a key Tea Party goal;

for low-income workers like Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder; and

(he only gave up the fight once the courts overruled him).

But the New Jersey governor sounds far more reasonable than other presidential hopefuls like Kentucky U.S. Sen.

, who's

and whose penchant for

was recently uncovered, and Texas U.S. Sen.

, the abrasive architect of the government shutdown that plummeted the GOP to its

So Christie has claimed the establishment mantle in the GOP, just as John McCain did in 2008 and Mitt Romney did in 2012.

While

snipe that they lost because of their "moderation," the reality is that both men

to win their GOP primaries and couldn't recover in the general election.

Now Christie has inspired a round of hero worship, evident in columns like "

" by GOP gadfly Dennis Lennox.

But the always quotable governor

also

has made enemies. "Double Down," the gossipy,

2012 campaign

semi-tell-all, details

in a '16 bid.

There's a 2010 Justice Department report criticizing Christie's "

free-spending habits in the U.S. attorney’s office," lingering questions over his 1994 defamation lawsuit and his habit of steering lucrative government contracts to allies like former U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft, the subject of a congressional hearing.

Now the American people deserve to know this information. But they also deserve to know how it came out -- and why.

The Christie opposition research was dumped from his 2012 vice presidential vetting file -- typically kept under lock and key. That means some former Romney aides , probably still bitter over Christie embracing President Obama after Sandy , made the rare move to go public with the file. And they were given

anonymity

to do so.

Notice how the skeletons of Romney's eventual pick, U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.), and others didn't leak in such spectacular detail.

"Double Down's" authors, Washington staples Mark Halperin and John Heilemann, allowed themselves to be used by Romney allies because the Christie revelations were too juicy to pass up.

In reality, the histories of Ryan or Florida U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio are probably similarly checkered. But those didn't make it into the book, although they would have provided balance, because the Romney sources had no interest in making anyone but Christie look bad.

Their mentality seems to be: If Romney can't be president, then Chris Christie can't, either.

It's up to journalists to exercise news judgment. It's easy to do sexy, "TMZ"-like stories about public figures' problems and personal lives to help sources settle scores . But it's not responsible. And it really shouldn't be called journalism.

Its also up to journalists to be fair. If you're going to hold Christie's feet to the fire, do the same for all VP candidates. If you're going to ask female politicians like Ingham County Clerk Barb Byrum if their kids miss them at home , ask male leaders the same question.

Maybe if we did that, we'd regain

.

Susan J. Demas is Publisher and Editor of

Inside Michigan Politics

, a nationally acclaimed, biweekly political newsletter. She can be reached at susan@sjdemas.com. Follow her on Twitter

.