Chris Christie Explodes

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has learned his lesson.

The Republican governor and presumptive presidential candidate can elicit an avalanche of positive media coverage by trashing Republicans.

Mitt Romney perfected the art during the 2012 primary election campaign. During the those debates Romney was constantly unloading on Republicans. So passionate were his attacks on Republicans that he had nothing left to go after Barack Obama.

I mentioned at the time that Romney was violating Ronald Reagan’s Eleventh Commandment: Thou shalt not speak ill of another Republican.

Last November Romney discovered that attacking Republicans makes you look disloyal and unlikable. It is also bad for turnout. 

If Chris Christie rides a wave of media adulation to the presidential nomination in 2016 he will likely discover the same thing.

Putting aside the question of whether the House should have passed a pork-laden Senate relief bill, Christie stole the media spotlight with his out-of-control self-righteous bluster.

He did not, of course, excoriate Harry Reid for filling the bill with pork that had nothing to do with Hurricane Sandy, New York or New Jersey. As always, he spoke fondly of President Obama.

Directing his fire only at the Republican Speaker of the House Christie even suggested that he might support a primary challenger to John Boehner.

The Weekly Standard suggested, indelicately, that Christie was suffering from an excessive craving for pork. It won't be long before someone affixes the epithet "porcine" to the governor of New Jersey.

If Christie had been sent out by Democrats to aggravate the divisions in the Republican Party, he did his job.

Bryan Preston summed it up:

Whatever his intentions were, Republican Chris Christie probably did more damage to the GOP in an hour than most Democrats manage to do in a lifetime.

[As for what's in the Bill, the Heritage blog, The Foundry offers a good overview: link here.]