Why The Christie Mess Is Even Worse For Him Than It Seems

[warrior1]

http://www.buzzfeed.com/bensmith/why-the-christie-mess-is-even-worse-for-him-than-it-seems

Political junkies know all about Chris Christie, and imagine that others do too. Now he’s the guy who closed the bridge.

Chris Christie has long been unusually popular for a politician — he’s the big-hearted, confrontational, and ultimately decent guy from half-remembered television moments, Letterman and Leno and the 2012 presidential election.

Until this week, however, he was missing a crucial piece of political image: Nobody associated him with a policy or a program, just with a general haze of good will.

Well, that problem has been solved. Chris Christie finally has a well-known policy stance. He’s the guy who closed a bridge as an act of petty retribution, and whose aides lied like crazy about it and said some truly despicable things — about, for instance, punishing Democratic voters’ children — in their private emails.

Christie denies having known about the politically motivated closures, and his aides’ testimony under oath and to law enforcement agents will probably shed some light on whether he’s telling the truth about that. But anyone who brushes off the damage that has been done to the former Republican frontrunner for 2016 is falling prey to the fallacy that dictates a lot of early presidential campaign coverage: They’re assuming people who express a mild preference for Chris Christie in opinion polls know anything about the guy.

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[MineralMan]

1. Lesson: Don't say stupid shit in emails.

Someone's gonna find out.