CHRISTIE FOR PRESIDENT? WHAT A THOUGHT….SEE NOTE
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704717004575268532932681458.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEFTSecond
LOVE THE GUY…BUT PRESIDENTIAL OR A MALE PALIN?
By JOHN FUND
New Jersey Governor Chris Christie’s rapid rise up the ranks of conservative heroes is being aided by a YouTube video of him dressing down a reporter who quizzed him about his “confrontational tone” in dealing with state legislators. Mr. Christie tells the reporter: “You should really see me when I’m pissed. . . . When you ask me questions, I’m going to answer them directly, straightly, bluntly and nobody in New Jersey is going to have to wonder where I am on an issue.”
Governor Christie is clearly prospering politically despite $5 million in attack ads being hurled against him by public employee unions furious about his budget cuts and demands for pay freezes. Last month voters in 59% of the state’s school districts followed his recommendation and voted down proposed school budgets that didn’t include “shared sacrifice” by restraining teacher pay and benefits.
Yesterday, the Governor crossed the Hudson River to address the conservative Manhattan Institute about his plan to place on the November ballot a constitutional amendment to cap property tax hikes at no more than 2.5% per year. The Christie plan would also limit state spending growth by a like amount, except for pensions and debt service. Over the last decade, he noted in his speech, municipal spending in New Jersey grew by 69%, and property taxes climbed by 70%. “At some point people’s ability to pay runs out. And ladies and gentleman, we are at that point,” he told his audience. “Things that used to be considered sacred cows, the third rails of politics, no longer are. They’ve been replaced by the issue of affordability.”
Mr. Christie was especially blunt on the malign influence of the New Jersey Education Association — “an absolutely out-of-control union that is used to getting everything it wants.” Without a change of direction, he added, New Jersey is “careening our way toward becoming Greece.”
Many who attended the breakfast came away admiring the feisty governor’s knack for rallying public support against Trenton’s entrenched spending interests. Imitation being the sincerest form of flattery, even New York’s Democratic gubernatorial frontrunner, Andrew Cuomo, in announcing his campaign this week, struck a tone that was distinctly Christie-like. If Mr. Christie can succeed in pushing his program through New Jersey’s Democratic legislature, he might well vault onto the GOP presidential shortlist in 2012. Certainly the conservatives who attended yesterday’s speech were impressed by a rare chief executive willing to tackle his state’s intractable problems in an unapologetic manner.
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