OPINION:
It’s always easy to tell who is the strongest Republican candidate. How? The mainstream media goes after him — hard.
That’s why more than a year ago, the New York Times set out on a mission to take down Chris Christie. The “paper of record” tied the New Jersey governor to a revenge plot to punish a neighboring mayor for not endorsing him by shutting down a toll crossing.
But it turns out, Christie wasn’t involved at all — just as he said in a 75-minute press conference (in which, unlike Hillary Clinton, he took so many questions reporters ran out).
The New York Times is at it again on today’s website. In their news-of-the-day story, the paper has this as their second paragraph: “The economic recovery he promised has turned into a cascade of ugly credit downgrades and anemic job growth. The state pension he vowed to fix has descended into a morass of missed payments and lawsuits. The administration he pledged would be a paragon of ethics has instead conspired to mire an entire town in traffic and the governor’s office in scandal.”
The paper puts Christie nearly at the bottom of the pack of candidates running for the GOP nomination — 13th out of 14th, ahead of only joke candidate Donald Trump.
But a slew of other “news” agencies piled on Tuesday morning, before Christie officially entered the race.
The Christian Science Monitor headlined its unbiased piece: “Remember when Chris Christie was going to be our next president?”
“Oh how the mighty have fallen,” the lead said. “If Chris Christie, governor of New Jersey, is at all reflective about the twists of his once-soaring political career, he might be muttering that biblical saying.
“But after ’Bridgegate,’ the 2013 scandal that ensnared several top aides, and major problems with New Jersey’s finances – including nine credit downgrades – Governor Christie has been brought low both at home and nationally. He enters the 2016 presidential race Tuesday a long shot.”
The Monitor asks “So why try at all?” and concludes its piece with: “In retrospect, maybe President Christie was never meant to be.”
Meanwhile, The Star Ledger, the biggest newspaper in New Jersey and a longtime critic of the governor, calls Christie a lair.
Tom Moran, who covered Christie for 14 years and serves on the paper’s editorial board, writes: “Don’t believe a word the man says.”
Christie, he says, lies “with such audacity, and such frequency, that he stands out. Somehow working in a “Downton Abbey” reference, Moran then turns to the dictionary to help him define a lie.
“Webster’s defines lie this way: ’To make an untrue statement with intent to deceive.’ That fits neatly.
“And that’s my warning to America. When Christie picks up the microphone, he speaks so clearly and forcefully that you assume genuine conviction is behind it. Be careful, though. It’s a kind of spell. He is a remarkable talent with a silver tongue. But if you look closely, you can see that it is forked like a serpent’s.”
Even the liberal papers in Britain are weighing in. The Guardian, which supports liberal DEmocrats in UK elections, writes another well-balanced story with this mild headline: “A Chris Christie presidency would be ’very disturbing’, New Jerseyans warn.”
The paper turns to Marie Corfield, an elementary school art teacher, for some
expert political analysis. And never mind that Christie has targeted the state’s teachers’ union and its cushy pensions, not to mention the fact tha firing unworthy teachers was nearly impossible — at least until Christie changed all that.
“In an interview with the Guardian on Monday, Corfield said that she didn’t think Christie would ever win a presidential election, but that she found the thought ’very disturbing’ all the same.
” ’He’s called legislators, elected officials in the state of New Jersey – he’s used words like “jerk”, “numbnuts”, “liar”,’ Corfield said. ’That’s not leadership, that’s textbook schoolyard bully.’ “
Before Christie jumped into the race, the New York Times went after Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, digging through his personal finances (he bought a fishing boat!) and even his driving record (he got four tickets in the last 17 years!). And that shows you who the frontrunners are in the 2016 nomination race.
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