Chris Christie and Terry McAuliffe: America Loves a Blowhard

[xchrom]

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/11/chris-christie-and-terry-mcauliffe-america-loves-a-blowhard/281191/



***SNIP

Christie, for his part, was known principally for his YouTube gallery of shouting matches with such critics as teachers'-union representatives until Hurricane Sandy hit the Atlantic coast in October 2012. An emotional Christie toured the devastation with Obama, lavishly praising the federal government's responsiveness to the crisis and, later, brutally lambasting congressional GOP when it temporarily refused to pass a federal aid package. Suddenly, Christie—a generally conservative governor by most measures—seemed like a maverick. His popularity skyrocketed; Cory Booker, the popular Democratic governor of Newark, decided to run for Senate rather than challenge him. Democrats instead put up as Christie's opponent a state senator, Barbara Buono, so little-known she devoted a campaign ad to teaching voters how to pronounce her name.

Despite New Jersey's strong Democratic lean, Buono never got much traction against Christie. She struggled to raise money and got little help from national Democrats, including the Democratic Governors Association, which declined to spend money on the race, and Obama, who campaigned for McAuliffe but not Buono. The shutdown provided another opportunity for Christie to campaign against Washington dysfunction and separate himself from the unpopular congressional GOP. He also dropped the state's appeal of a court ruling legalizing gay marriage, which he personally opposes. A telling moment came during a debate between Buono and Christie when the candidates were asked to say something nice about one another. Buono could muster only a backhanded compliment, attempting to undercut Christie with a crack about him being good on talk shows. Christie launched into a seemingly sincere paean to Buono's record of public service, praising her civic-mindedness and coming off as magnanimous. It's easy to be gracious when you're the frontrunner by a mile, but the episode showed the agility of Christie’s political instincts.

For Republicans not too deep in denial to draw the obvious conclusions, these two elections offer a clear lesson. (Already, however, conservative activists who once looked to Cuccinelli to prove that a staunch conservative could succeed are spinning his loss as the result of extraneous factors, such as the gift-taking scandal that has enveloped McDonnell and the presence of a Libertarian Party candidate on the ballot.) Christie has already begun pitching his success as a path forward for the GOP to put its divisions behind and become nationally viable again, a case that his reelection will bolster. Despite rumblings that his embrace of Obama would make him unacceptable to conservatives nationally, Christie leads some early surveys of 2016 presidential preferences—but then again, so does Cruz. It will be up to the Republican primary voters to decide which course to take.

Yet with a reelected Christie poised to become a major national figure, Tuesday's result may be a warning as much to Democrats as it is to the GOP. Republicans will have a hard time succeeding if they follow Cuccinelli, Cruz, and the far-right fringe. But the toxicity of the Republican brand proved no obstacle at all to a candidate savvy enough to stake out a forceful and distinct persona and convince voters he can hurdle partisanship to get things done. Any Democrats who previously thought demographics, tactical superiority, and Republican disarray made their party a lock in 2016 ought to look at Chris Christie and think again.

[scheming daemons]

1. America loves a blowhard... if he isnt a teabagger

Sarah Palin is a blowhard

Ted Cruz is a blowhard

[Mass]

2. In VA, it should read : run a scumbag against another scumbag is not a good idea.

Cooch was crazy, wanted to limit marriage and contraception. He only lost narrowly.

I wonder how many people, hearing McAuliffe would won, stayed home because they could not bring themselves to vote for him. Seems pretty clear that he won on ideas, which may be a shocker for McAuliffe, who has never believed in issues.

[phylny]

4. Cooch wanted to outlaw oral sex.

McAuliffe ran a good campaign, and Cooch's campaign didn't eviscerate him enough. Good thing. It's bad enough in the red part where I live. I couldn't bear to explain to my husband why I couldn't...well, you know...anymore.

On second thought, maybe I'd have kept it to myself, for selfish and personal reasons

[beachbum bob]

3. america like people who appear to be

"in charged"....being a blowhard doesn't necessarily help if you don't appear to get things done. Christie demonstrates a "fire" with his "passion" and voters gravitate to it. A major weakness in many liberals and progressives, they do not come across as leaders most of the time becasue they appear to be weak because of the lack of the "fire". How much did we enjoy when a democratic becomes passionate and goes on the attack?

[Katashi_itto]

5. I know zip about Terry McAuliffe, is he a real blowhard?