GayPatriot

The Internet home for American gay conservatives.

Chris Christie, The New Michael Dukakis?

by

Guest Post from GP Community Member V The K.

=========

2016 is shaping up like a rerun of 1988, an election coming on the heels of a two-term presidency by a strongly ideological president. And in 2016, as in 1988, the party in power is poised to hand the baton to a defeated rival from the prior primary campaign who served the administration loyally afterward; George H.W. Bush in 1988, Hillary Rodham Clinton in 2016.

The Republican Party is in a comparable position to the Democrats 0f 1988; the party has been rejected in two successive national elections, its base is dispirited, and its governing philosophy repudiated by the electorate. Thus, Chris Christie of New Jersey, should he be the Republican nominee, is cast in the role of Bush 41’s hapless opponent Michael Dukakis; a man whose example he is likely to follow into humiliating defeat.

Here are 10 Reasons for that:

1. Christie and Dukakis are both blue-state governors with mediocre records. Christie and Dukakis have both been governors of liberal northeastern states. Both campaigned for governor as reformers, but achieved little in the way of actual reforms while in office. (For all Christie’s screaming at schoolteachers, all he’s really accomplished is increasing the number of years to get tenure from 3 to 4. Yeah, that’ll break the back of the teacher’s union.) Both are supporters of gun control, Amnesty for illegal immigrants, and massive Federal spending in their own states. (BTW: New Jersey’s economic performance under Christie: No so great.

2. Both gained notoriety by dealing with natural disasters. Both Christie and Dukakis burnished their “leadership” credentials during natural disasters. Dukakis went on TV during the Blizzard of ‘78 to deliver weather bulletins. Christie famously hugged Obama in the aftermath of “Superstorm Sandy” and yelled at Republicans to pass a massive “Relief” Bill that contained more pork-barrel spending than actual hurricane relief.

3. Both had rivals who were taken out by bad judgment. Before the 1988 primaries, the Democrat frontrunner was a good-looking senator who was the darling of his party; Gary Hart of Colorado. Hart took himself out of the race after being caught en flagrante with Jessica Hahn. Going into 2016, the Republican Party also had an attractive, much adored senator who was the clear frontrunner… until Marco Rubio got caught in bed with Chuck Schumer and Dick Durbin.

4. The Republican Primary Field of 2016 is a Bizarro-World version of the 1988 Democrat Primary Field. Christie, like Dukakis, may face in the primaries: an ideological stalwart beloved by the activist base (Jesse Jackson/Ted Cruz), a congressman with deep ties to the party establishment but little appeal outside of it (Dick Gephardt/Paul Ryan); and a senator representing a political dynasty (Al Gore/Rand Paul). Should he prevail, Christie is likely to emerge as a candidate with an unenthusiastic party behind him, just like Dukakis in 1988.

5. Christie has his own Willie Hortons in the form of Abel Hernandez, Andy Maguino, and Jose Luis Galindo-Sanchez… illegal immigrants benefiting from New Jersey’s “sanctuary cities” who killed Americans. Maguino, notably, was sentenced to probation and community service after running down an old lady in his car and fleeing the scene. [Link]

6. Like Dukakis, Christie will also have his “tank” moment. For Dukakis, his desperation to prove he was not a weak-on-defense northeastern liberal led to a photo op riding around in a tank and looking like… a weak-on-defense northeastern liberal riding around in a tank. Christie has to do something to disavow his post -Sandy bromance with Obama. At some point, he is going to have to denounce his BFF, and in doing so, he is likely to end up looking very foolish because the gesture will be so transparently fake… like Dukakis in the tank.

7. Christie Will Need a Running Mate to Pick Up Voters His Party Is Losing. Dukakis picked Lloyd Bentsen as his running mate to reach out to “Reagan Democrats.” Christie will also have to choose a running mate more appealing than he is to a key voting bloc, in his case, women. He may choose someone like New Hampshire senator Kelly Ayotte; a northeastern moderate who shares his support for Amnesty and Gun Control.

8. Christie, Like Dukakis, will try and turn a negative personality trait into a positive. Dukakis tried to pass off dull detachment as “competence.” Christie tries to pass off being a jerk as “leadership.” The problem is that leadership and competence are just empty slogans. Bush 41 beat Dukakis by promising to continue Reagan’s policies; a promise he almost immediately broke by imposing massive tax increases, but “Read My Lips” got him into office, because he presented voters with something tangible – a continuation of Reagan Era prosperity. Dukakis lost, and Christie will lose, because neither man presents a compelling alternative to the person he did/will run against.

9. Both face opponents who are mediocre politicians riding the coat-tails of better politicians. If Christie is the Mike Dukakis of 2016, Hillary Clinton is the George H.W. Bush. Like Bush 41, she is the heir-apparent to a two-term president who wrought major changes to the country. Like Bush 41, she is an awkward campaigner with a grating speaking style.

10. Like Dukakis, Christie will lose massively. A lot of people are claiming Chris Christie is “the only man who can beat Hillary.” Most of those people want Hillary to win. Hillary will win by promising a return to the era of her husband’s presidency; and a large number of voters are incapable of critical thinking beyond “the last time a Clinton was in office, I was doing all right.”

Who concocted talking point that video caused Benghazi deaths?

by

And on what evidence?

And why, as evidence mounts that U.S. officials on the ground in Libya knew from almost the very moments the attacks began, that this was a terrorist attack, that Democrats and their allies in the mainstream are strangely disinterested in this fabrication.

If you watched CNN tonight (at least from 5:40 PST until nearly 6:40), you’d be unaware of serious evidence brought to light today about the Administration’s duplicity on the Benghazi attacks. Seems some strange Arizona woman’s criminal actions have more bearing on the national interest than the Obama team’s misrepresenting a terrorist attack. Not to mention in its inept response to that attack.

RELATED: “Where Was the Commander-in-Chief For All of This?” (And why don’t our friends in the media care to ask?)

UPDATE:  Over at Commentary, Jonathan Tobin does a great job of fleshing out a point related to the question addressed in the title to this post:

Just as problematic was [senior diplomat Gregory[ Hicks’s telling of his shock when he heard U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice tell the country that U.S. intelligence had decided the attack was the result of film criticism run amuck. Given that he had already communicated to Washington the fact that the film wasn’t a factor in Libya and that U.S. personnel in Libya knew the assault was the work of an Islamist group connected to al-Qaeda, this makes the growing controversy about the truth behind the official administration talking points that the White House altered to downplay any connection to terror even more worrisome. [Read more…]

The two Benghazi scandals (bumped)

by

In the immediate aftermath of the attack last September on the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, our media acted more as amplifiers for the Obama campaign and the Obama administration, parroting campaign talking points (about the supposed inappropriateness of then-Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s critique of the administration) and failing to question the official explanation for the attack (that it was a spontaneous uprising in response to a video about which no one ever heard).  In short, all too many in the legacy media reported the story as if their job was to amplify what they heard from the Obama team rather than investigate how said team handled the attack.

The first scandal is thus that of the media giving short shrift to a story with the potential to embarrass the incumbent administration in the midst of the presidential campaign.

The second scandal — and the much bigger one — is the attempts of that administration, with top officials, perhaps up to and including the then-Secretary of State and the President of the United States, to mislead the public for political gain.  Citing the Interim Progress Report released by five House Republican committee chairmen released last mont, Michael Barone reported that 

. . . the accounts given by the Obama administration at the time were misleading — deliberately so.

It noted that State immediately reported the attack to the White House Situation Room and two hours later noted an al Qaeda affiliate’s claim of responsibility. There was no mention of a spontaneous protest of an anti-Muslim video.

Yet Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and press secretary Jay Carney spoke repeatedly for days later of a video and a protest. Clinton assured one victim’s family member that the video-maker was being prosecuted.

With more news trickling out in the nine days since Barone posted his piece, it’s becoming increasingly clear that there was a lot more deliberate misleading than initially reported. [Read more…]

Hillary’s Withdrawal Speech

by

Would it that I had not slept in this morning and could have caught the whole speech, but when I tuned in (just after 10 AM PST, 1 AM EST) to hear Hillary announce she was suspending her presidential campaign, I noticed how she shouted it, speaking almost without inflection. Until the end of this address when she spoke softly, almost elegically, she hardly shifted her tone.

It seemed incredibly self-serving, talking mostly about herself, defining herself as a pioneer. No real female leader would have spent so much time dwelling on her gender.

In the part of the speech I caught, I didn’t hear her once reference the presumptive Republican nominee John McCain. An interesting oversight if that held true for the entire speech.

While she did endorse Barack Obama, she didn’t seem very gracious or indicate she was humbled either by the support she generated in the campaign or the loss she suffered in the end. At times, it seemed she was defiant.

When I tuned it, I heard little more than a string of platitudes, no memorable lines, not a discourse likely to be remembered as has been Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy’s speech, conceding the 1980 Democratic presidential nomination to Jimmy Carter. Only one line struck me as particularly memorable and it was her offensive insistence about “taking back” America as if some foreign power had conquered us and we needed to end the occupation.

UPDATE from Bruce (GayPatriot): The most shocking thing to me about her speech was that she said some twisted 13-year old girl in Ohio gave up her lifelong dream/savings of going to Disney World in order to go with her Mother to work for Hillary in the Pennsylvania Primary. What the hell is in the water in that Ohio town? 🙂

UP-UPDATE from Bruce (GayPatriot): Oh yeah, another thing. Dick Morris is WRONG AGAIN. He has been saying for the past God-only-knows-how-many-YEARS that Hillary Clinton would be elected President in 2008. Why do people still listen to him, again?

UP-UP-UPDATE from Dan: A close friend of mine and Hillary supporter, now backing Obama, disagrees with my assessment of the speech and thought it moving and heart-felt as did our thoughtful Hillary-supporting commenter, Darkeyedresolve.

UP-UP-UP-UPDATE from Dan: Citing Chris Cilliza’s Washington Post blog report on the speech, Paul Mirengoff writes:

like most defeated candidates, Clinton invested her campaign with a significance and heroic quality it doesn’t quite deserve. While Clinton talked about a glass ceiling, the reality is that initiallly the race was hers to win. If there are identity barriers associated with obtaining the Democratic nomination for president, the one Obama faced is at least as formidable as the one Clinton complains about.

Terrorists Guide to USA Elections

by

I’m glad I didn’t have to do all of the hard civics work and research needed to present the “Terrorists Guide to the USA Election”…. Michelle Malkin has done it for me.

Bravo!

-Bruce (GayPatriot)