Below is a clip that shows highlights of a speech that the
Republican Governor of New Jersey, Chris Christie, gave last night. Don’t let
the fact that he looks and sounds like a character from The Sopranos fool you,
this is powerful stuff.
As the tense negotiations surrounding the ‘fiscal
cliff’ came to a conclusion at the new year, Republican house speaker John
Boehner (the guy in charge of Congress, the only Republican controlled bit of
the US government) realised that he had already pushed his hard right party as
far as it would go on passing measures that would increase government spending,
and decided he
could not ask them to vote on a bill which would have approved federal
government relief for the victims of Hurricane Sandy. Yes, really. Elected
Republicans would actually vote against disaster relief for their own people.
Chris Christie is the governor of one of the States most affected
by the storm. He is understandably furious that his own party would treat his
people in this way. I expect that fury is shared by a great many Americans. I
should also mention that Governor Christie is a very serious politician, one of
the few in the Republican ranks who could plausibly reach out across the
partisan divide and make a presidential run. Indeed, many serious Republicans,
including Henry Kissinger if I remember rightly, were urging him to do so last
time round. Watch this guy. If there is going to be some sort of Republican
revival in the future, it will be based around someone like him.
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