ELECTION DAY'S WEIGHTIEST ISSUE



Forget Virginia, they’re voting for Santa Claus!

You know what, just forget about Virginia! Forget Cuccinelli versus Terry McAuliffe, okay? We know you were told this was a vital, unprecedentedly significant election because it was “a referendum on Obamacare!” We know you were told that it was the tea-party versus establishment Democrats and that the gubernatorial election in Virginia will serve as a bellwether for all that follows on through the midterms and all the way to 2016. And WOOF is here to tell you: “Flapdoodle and horsefeathers, gentle readers!” Believe not a word of this twaddle! What the Virginia election will undoubtedly prove is that a second-string Clintonista who made a living up until now being a fundraiser and party chairman (read hack) can take a face familiar to TV news viewers and 35 million dollars raised for him by his pals Hillary and Bill Clinton to purple Virginia and beat a lackluster conservative who had a war chest of 18 million dollars tops and was out of cash long before he skidded into election day. It proves that airing ten TV ads for every one of your opponent’s while relying on a doggedly sympathetic “news” media and counting on a faux third party candidacy (a fake libertarian covertly financed by Obama’s money managers) to draw support from the conservative’s base is a pretty simple way to win an election. And that’s all it proves, understood? All this media blather about a referendum on Obamacare is ridiculous—because the full brunt of Obamacare is still unfelt throughout most of the nation. One hundred million Americans are about to lose their health insurance, no kidding, people! The full brunt of this is still out on the horizon for most of us. And if you are honestly wondering how Virginians could be so stupid as to elect the sorry likes of a slack-jawed drone like Terry McAuliffe all other considerations aside, you obviously haven’t studied our profound summation of why everybody (not just Virginia) is getting dumber! [review here!]

Now here’s what really matters—the shoe-in election that was never really in question—the race nobody had any doubts about matters! Because the Republican is about to win big in a totally blue state! And that’s great news, right? Welll….no. Sorry. It could actually be bad news…looking ahead a bit. Allow us to dilate on this point:

Once upon a time, there was a wonderful young firebrand of a seemingly unalloyed conservative so powerfully committed to effusions of dextral eloquence and skewering criticisms of the media, unions, and other Leftist entities that the beautiful and talented Ann Coulter pronounced him her ideal presidential candidate for 2012, and Glenn Beck found his daily reproofs of the liberal press so irresistibly winsome that he called the sound bites “Christie Porn!” (It was meant as an encomium, trust us!)

Now time has passed, and our beamish (okay, portly) Conservative solon will, by the time this story greets your eyes, have swept to victory in New Jersey so overwhelmingly as to remain the unquestioned Governor of the Garden State and at the same time emerge the undisputed front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016. So are we happy? No, of course not, we aren’t happy at all—and it would be disingenuous of us to pretend you don’t know why, gentle readers! However, just to review:

Shades of Brown….

In considering the many subsequent perfidies of Chris Christie, the mind naturally wanders to the political shooting star of Scott Brown who was rocketed into the senate from Massachusetts as a tea-party favorite in 2010 only to immediately betray a decidedly more, shall we say, eclectic side and presume upon his electorate’s tolerance by shifting into any number of strikingly un-conservative positions on several key votes, until his 2012 ouster by Elizabeth Warren, who, while not a real Cherokee (despite her ludicrous claims to that effect),was at least a real Democrat.

Christie, for his part, defeated the execrable Jon Corzine for the gubernatorial post and immediately set about balancing the state’s budget, as promised. He managed this without raising taxes, much to his credit, although he did reduce certain tax credits and property relief programs. Ideally, a true supply-side approach would have lowered taxes and enhanced revenues more substantially, but explaining this to New Jersey legislators might well have proved inconceivable, so no points lost there. Christie also called for an across-the board 10% flat tax plan, (two percent too pricey, though a great idea) but the legislature has yet to act on the proposal which in its current avatar will apply only to those earning less than 400 grand per year. A flat tax would, in fact, increase revenues garnered from the wealthy, but politics relies on the marketable, not necessarily the actual, and Democrats like to appear to be giving the rich a good soaking while keeping them (and themselves) in their tax shelters and deductible investments. Oh well.

Blessed with the luxury of a line-item veto, Christie was also able to trim $1 billion from New Jersey’s proposed budget for 2011. Over the shrieking of Democrat legislators he slashed some overstuffed welfare programs and established 23 new charter schools while toughening the tenure requirements in public education. He even got into a nice early spat with the Obama Regime when it attempted to impose some Chicago-style mobster-ism on the annoyingly right-wing governor by having its Department of Health and Human Services discover a clerical error in New Jersey’s application for school funds that struck the Department as so offensive it was forced to withhold 400 million dollars in grants, darn it. Christie responded by charging the Obama administration with abuse of its authority (as if this were a rarity) but the money remained in limbo.

So everything was looking great for a love match between the Right and his Excellency, Chris Christie—and Christie even vetoed New Jersey’s same-sex marriage bill, which was a sufficiently conservative gesture that nobody minded (at least nobody at WOOF minded) when he almost simultaneously appointed the first openly Gay man to the New Jersey Supreme Court. It is one of those ironies that must await comment from future historians (since no one in contemporary media will mention it) that the Democrat legislature refused the Gay nominee the seat—the homophobes!

Fervent Gays to the left….

But on August 19 2013, Christie signed a bill outlawing gay conversion therapy in children. Why? This was hardly a go-along-to-get-along move on Christie’s part; New Jersey’s anti-reparative therapy law is only the second such law in America. As outreach to the Gay community it makes a sort of Machiavellian sense, however, because the Gay Left reacts to conversion therapy the way Bela Lugosi reacts to a crucifix. It may be possible, therefore, to view this ban as a sop to the Gay community and to the far more populace enclaves of liberal voters who view the Gay community as a kind of protectorate.

And thus, inevitably, there is the larger Gay issue, because even though statisticians keep assuring us that only about 2% of Americans are Gay—which is about the same percent of Americans who possess Ph.D.s or who claim to have experienced UFO abduction (though no overlap is implied), a major selling point for any candidate continues to be where he stands on the super-cool issue of Gay marriage—an issue that has been called “the civil rights issue of the 21st Century,” no matter how ridiculously. And because the Gay-marriage issue galvanizes the penchant for exhibitionistic sanctimony endemic to the mooncalves of Hollywood, we are exposed to torrents of advocacy through media. And on this consequently significant issue, Governor Christie has craftily—if cravenly—taken a wonderfully ambiguous non-step. He simply decided not to appeal a ruling allowing same-sex marriage, while paying lip service to the sacred connection of a man and a woman. This naturally outrages social conservatives. It also exasperates us here at WOOF—although Governor Christie is nowhere on record as caring about us here at WOOF. But he might care a little about people like Bob Vander Plaats, an influential social-conservative in Iowa, (Iowa, get it?) who told National Review that “This would suit him a lot better if he were running as a Democrat.”

But being perceived as Democrat isn’t going to damage Christie in a gubernatorial race in New Jersey. Not hardly. It will more than probably help him amass a larger portion of the vote—in New Jersey. New Jersey liked Jon Corzine, for heaven’s sake. Woodrow Wilson was governor of New Jersey, for heaven’s sake (before making the world safe for democracy), and yes, even Jim McGreevey, whose least defective characterological component was his homosexuality—proved electable in New Jersey–so Christie has not damaged himself for domestic consumption. And indeed, if the only rap Conservatism had against Chris Christie were his apparent coziness with the Gay community, there would be precious little to criticize. There is that part in John Milius’s script for the second Dirty Harry movie, Magnum Force, in which Clint Eastwood’s Harry is warned of a rumor that the new detachment of recruits whose marksmanship skills he’s just witnessed are “queer for each other.” Harry rejoins that “If the rest of you could shoot like them, I wouldn’t care if the whole damn department was queer!” And if a kindly predisposition toward Gays were the extent of Chistie’s sins, WOOF would wouldn’t care if the Governor wanted to perform outreach in drag—although the imagery this conjures might be adjudged aesthetically criminal, we’ll grant you. But this is only by way of saying that Governor Christie has redder flags than this in his dossier.

Midnight at the Oasis of Good and Evil…

The Governor’s eagerness to wax multicultural has taken him well beyond the Gay community. He is also an unabashed defender of Islam, and we don’t mean merely that he’ll stick up for a dedicated Muslim here or there. He will go the extra mile for the most radical exponents of Sharia law into the bargain. Take Sohail Mohammed. Please. Sohail is a lawyer who functions as a mouthpiece for radical Islamic groups and defends such venomous characters as the known Hamas operative Mohammed Qatanani with a lengthy record of arrests and a conviction by Israeli authorities for functioning as an agent of Hamas and providing financial and professional support to the terrorist organization. This appears not to bother Christie who appointed the radical Islamist lawyer Sohail to the state bench while defending Qatanani’s good name. Christie went so far as to publicly embrace the radical imam at a Ramadan breakfast at his mosque (while DHS was attempting to deport him), declaring him “a man of great good will.” WOOF can not encapsulate these events more succinctly than has Pamela Geller who remarked that Christie’s embrace of the radical Hamas functionary took New Jersey on “its first step to becoming a Sharia state.” One could, WOOF supposes, remark mordantly on the irony of promoting homosexuals and Sharia law simultaneously in the name of outreach, since all the former will be stoned to death by the practitioners of the latter once the latter has attained sufficient prominence—but nobody will ask Chris Christie about such a paradox—that wouldn’t be politically correct!

Predictably, when called out for his irrational support of radical Islamic terror merchants, Christie responded with one of his patented tantrums, ranting about bigoted “Sharia crazies” who were unhappy with his appointee simply because Sohail was Muslim. That it was he, Christie, who was handing out choice jobs to authentic Sharia crazies, seemed to elude the governor completely…but Christie’s behavior in these matters is not a mere byproduct of naïveté. As Daniel Pipes has written, “Whenever an issue touching on Islam arises, Christie takes the Islamist side against those — the DHS, state senators, the NYPD, even the ACLU — who worry about lawful Islamism eroding the fabric of American life.” Witness the Governor’s hissy fit when he discovered the New York Police Department was conducting surveillance of Islamic radicals in Newark and New Brunswick, capped off with an insult directed at NYPD Commissioner Raymond Kelly.

While Christie also vocally maintains his staunch support of Israel, this provides small comfort as he willfully allows anti-Constitutional barbarism to extend its grip on his state.

Christie Care?

Christie distinguished himself in the eyes of an increasingly affectionate media by opting out of the crowd of Republican governors who joined in a multi-state lawsuit challenging the legitimacy of the Affordable Care Act. Christie declined to sign, citing his reluctance to commit his state to the 2,000-page statute and its attendant cost. But these reasons don’t hold water. The cost to New Jersey of joining in the suit would have been 1,000 dollars, and the 2000 page brief could have been properly vetted within a couple of business days by the legal staff readily available to the task. In fact, WOOF must conclude that Christie is a closet Obamacare supporter. Certainly, he is an effusive, even a combative supporter of RomneyCare. In fact, RomneyCare seems to be about the only thing Christie liked about Romney. Christie joined the glut of Democratic governors crowding the federal trough to scoop up ObamaCare funds for “high-risk” insurance pools. Where most Republican governors opted out, Christie raced in to score the 140 million set aside for New Jersey. Just politics? All the more reason for circumspection, we would argue.

True, WOOF must acknowledge that Christie vetoed the state’s insurance-exchange legislation, but please note that he did so only at the eleventh hour and only after a massive amount of exhortation from the Right that he do so, and he felt so bad about giving even this degree of offense to Our Beloved Leader that he followed up his veto with his on-the-record assurance that “my Administration . . . stands ready to implement the Affordable Care Act if its provisions are ultimately upheld,” which of course they were (thanks, Justice Roberts!) Christie, in fact, has long been an advocate of universal health insurance, and the governor consistently supports funding increases for his state’s “FamilyCare” — New Jersey’s state-subsidized healthcare program. WOOF realizes that many readers will argue that federalism is exactly where any “public option” belongs—as determined by the individual states, not the central government! But Christie has okayed funding for FamilyCare at the level of 350 percent of the federal poverty level, and these are not the actions of a man who would, in actual fact, ever consider repealing ObamaCare on a national level!

Bad RINO! No biscuit!

Remember when, earlier in this screed, we quoted Bob Vander Plaats in Iowa as having said of all this, “This would suit [Christie] a lot better if he were running as a Democrat?” Okay, you probably don’t remember, but that’s okay—our minds wander too. Anyway, Mr. Plaats—don’t you think he is running as a Democrat? That’s the idea here, after all—and it’s the modus operendi of the RNC and the RINO population of Insider DC. It can be summarized by saying that to them, the modern, electable Republican is more or less “Scoop” Jackson, or maybe Sam Nunn, just a pragmatic Democrat from the olden days. (Remember those Democrats?) who’s not a commie and shows up at the right conventions.

Most readers will recall that Christie’s most deplorable display of Obama-era sycophancy came on the heels of Hurricane Sandy when he infamously threw himself into Our Beloved Helmsman’s arms and shared a bizarre, teletubbie moment on the Atlantic City Board Walk. The notorious hug! Alas, this is one of those uncomfortable moments when WOOF must interject, even into its own heated fustian, the unvarnished truth and admit that in fact, this is not what happened—the Governor never fully or entirely embraced the First Marxist, contrary to the mountains of partisan reportage both left and right that support the event’s occurrence. But the Governor’s assertion that he merely shook hands is also untrue! As an amplitude of photographs suffice to demonstrate, POTUS and Christie gamboled together along the boardwalk like mutually smitten teenagers, and even vied for stuffed animal prizes at various game stalls.

Yes, and at one stop, Christie pegged a football through a hoop with one toss and won a teddy bear (awww!) after Our Beloved Leader missed it five times. (Did you imagine otherwise?) And after endless displays of back slapping, mutual giggling and arm-in-arm camaraderie, Christie bestirred himself to praise the Bamster effusively, declaring, (in the midst of a heated presidential election, you’ll recall) that “It’s been a great working relationship,” and “I cannot thank the president enough for his personal concern and compassion for our state.” Christie insisted it was his “honor” to turn the podium over to the First Marxist, saying the president had been “outstanding,” “incredibly supportive” and “deserves great credit.” All right, this was after all the President of the United States, and the Governor’s state needed federal help after hurricane Sandy, we’ll grant you. But is this the sort of major news one wishes to make in a tightly contested election year when one’s man is supposedly Mitt Romney? You know you have trouble on the right when it takes the NY Times to center you, and it was the Times that wrote: “As the president and the governor flew over the devastated Jersey Shore, at least one resident seemed to be staying on message. At the north end of Point Pleasant Beach, someone had etched in the sand: ‘ROMNEY.’”

Miscellaneous murmurings:

Then there was the Great Romney Snub—that moment during the campaign of 2012 when Christie was supposed to make the short hop from Trenton to appear with Romney at a Pennsylvania rally, but couldn’t manage to show. Instead, he was reportedly home weeping, so overcome was he by the fact that the President had Bruce Springsteen call him and thank him for his efforts in the aftermath of hurricane Sandy. Evidently this blew Romney clean out of Christie’s consciousness. He couldn’t wait to tell a Monday morning briefing that Springsteen (a rigidly conformist, establishment Leftist) had called him. Christie admitted the call left him in tears of gratitude because, he explained, he was “The Boss’s” biggest fan (which is entirely possible—okay that was low), having attended 120 Springsteen concerts despite the fact that Springsteen had doggedly refused to speak to him on numerous occasions. Given these details, one can easily see how Romney slipped Christie’s mind…sort of.

Consider also that the Governor recently spent 24 million on two quick special elections to replace the late Democratic Senator Frank Lautenberg when he could have easily and cheaply installed a Republican appointee to the seat for eighteen full months. Instead he appointed a Republican to serve only until the special election. While in office, said Republican’s only memorable vote was cast for “immigration reform.” So maybe the special elections were a better idea after all.

Perhaps most tellingly, Christie has gloried in public chastisements of other Republicans whom he seems to regard as annoyingly right wing. These include Newt Gingrich about whom he said, “Speaker Gingrich has never run anything,” Peter King, who attacked Christie’s Islamophilia and was dismissed by the Governor who quipped, “Whenever he mentions my name he gets himself on TV,” and the NRA, which Christie scolded for mentioning Obama’s children in a (trenchant and effective) TV commercial; and as if this were not a sufficient catalog of effronteries, dear readers, the man next saw fit to attack the beautiful and talented Sarah Palin, suggesting that her speaking was too tightly scripted. Palin shot back from the shapely hip, contending that, “[Christie’s] got a shtick going there where he’s got a YouTube videographer following him around, kind of these set-up situations sometimes so he can be seen as perhaps a little bit avant-garde and going rogue on things.” Scripted? We think not! And it will not surprise regular WOOF readers to learn that we consider the matter resolved in Mrs. Palin’s favor.

Finally, there is the remaining matter of Christie’s most recent dust-up with the pesky Rand Paul. Back in July, Governor Christie took time out of his busy schedule to reflect on Senator Paul’s political philosophy, opining that, “As a former prosecutor who was appointed by President George W. Bush….I just want us to be really cautious because this strain of libertarianism that’s going through both parties right now and making big headlines, I think, is a very dangerous thought.” On the bright side, of course, Governor Christie seems to have detected a strain of libertarianism in the Democrat Party, so he has a sharper eye than we have! On the bleaker side, doesn’t this point up a snotty contentiousness on Christie’s part that is simply intended to ingratiate him to the Liberal Establishment Media? And isn’t that the same path to destruction down which ambled a deluded John McCain in 2008, seemingly persuaded that his “frenzsh” in the media were actual, rather than transparently temporary? Must our latest Charlie Brown take yet another run at the liberals’ football in 2016?

But what we wanted to close with was this: After an exchange of barbs that lasted a couple of news cycles, Rand Paul decided to play the bigger man (oops, we did it again) and invite Christie to resolve their differences over beers. Christie’s response was characteristically ill-tempered:

“I don’t really have time for that at the moment,”Christie told a local radio interviewer. “I’ve got work to do here to get reelected … [and] dealing with the other issues that invariably come on the desk of a governor when you are responsible for actually doing things and not just debating.” Maybe beer is the problem. Maybe Paul should have made a second offer, tendering Diet Cokes?

No matter– by the time you read this we can guarantee you that Christie will have won re-election in New Jersey (two cheers!) and the Liberal Establishment Media will be experiencing paroxysms of giddiness, jointly envisioning him as the logical Republican candidate in 2016. “A pragmatist!” we’ll be told, “not a hopeless ideologue!” (Because only the Left gets to run those!)

We must not succumb to this propaganda, Woofketeers! We must oppose this effort by the Liberal Establishment to reinvent the candidacies of Bob Dole, John McCain, and yes, dear Mitt whom we mention fondly but without the slightest supposition that we are mentioning a man of the Authentic Right. For our parts, as you probably guessed, we continue to staunchly advocate the candidacy of our perennial favorite, Christine O’Donnell, but in the circumstances we are prepared to remain flexible. And if the moribund RNC seems determined to take another run at Lucy’s football, we may become so flexible that….well…let’s just say Reince Priebus won’t love us any more. Are you reading this Reince Priebus? We know you’re out there. How do you pronounce that, anyway? Did you make it up or something? Are you even real? Anyhow….happy election day, everyone!

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WOOF WISHES TO ACKNOWLEDGE that this particular post resulted in our being banned from “Conservatives” on Reddit, by a moderator who accused us of spamming–but coincidentally posted a sidebar (that very day!) about how wonderful Chris Christie is. For gosh sakes, Reddit, is there no room for dialogue?