Christie in Doo Doo Deeper Than the Snow

Ruh-roh:

I just got off the phone with former Acting Governor Steve Sweeney.

I asked the Senate president about the governor's statement at a press conference in Freehold Thursday to the effect that he and Christie had been in contact during the time Christie spent at Disney World:

"Senator Sweeney and I consulted on all of the significant decisions that needed to be made during the period of my time out of the state," Christie said at the press conference. "We never once disagreed on what needed to be done."

The reason they didn't disagree, Sweeney told me, is that they never spoke.

"I never spoke to him the entire time," Sweeney told me. "He and I never spoke until he got back."

Who's telling the truth? It sure looks like Sweeney. He made similar statements to News12 New Jersey on Wednesday, even before the governor got back.

So there's yet another embarrassment for a governor who's spent the week turning a simple snowstorm into a public-relations disaster. Christie's bizarre performance at that press conference will go down in political history as a textbook case in how not to handle a tough situation.

Big kudos to Crazy Uncle Paul on this (again - I call him that because, like so many of my crazy uncles, he can be quite brilliant and quite insane at the same time).

UPDATE: Catherine Lugg adds:

Since Gov Christie has been radically defunding local governments and school districts since taking office (in the name of tax cuts for the rich), the next statement during this press conference is a landmark in chutzpah. From Mulshine:

in Ocean and Monmouth counties, drifts of 4 and 5 feet were common – and still are. Major four-lane state highways were reduced to two lanes through Wednesday.

This guy is entirely out of touch with reality. Note this attack on local mayors:

When asked about mayors who said they were forced to divert their resources to unplowed state roads instead of clearing local roads Christie said, “I know who these mayors are and they should buck up and take responsibility for the fact that they didn’t do their job.”

They didn’t do their job? Did our governor perhaps take some LSD during his trip to Disney, as the hippies used to do in the ’60s? He must be hallucinating.

Many towns did an excellent job of cleaning their own streets. But what’s the use of clearing side streets when the main arteries are impassable? Christie has to take responsibility for the fact that the state didn’t do its job when he was at Disney World. Instead he blames the locals who stayed and tried to make up for the abject incompetence of his administration.

And as I’ve noted, the worst clean-up job was done in the very counties that gave the governor the most votes. Sweeney had no reason to help out all those Republicans. But is Christie seriously trying to convince us that even if he’d been here in Jersey he still would have shafted the very people who put him into office?

In that case, he is the single most clueless politician in America. And no, Christie still has yet to sign the anti-bullying bill. It’s all about priorities. Obviously, if he’s not interested in serving the state in the midst of the worst blizzards in decades, queer kids are not going to get ANY help from this cat.

I never thought I'd be looking at Paul Mulshine's words through Catherine Lugg's eyes; but when I do, I can really see what a terrible politician Chris Christie is:

• He's done everything he can to alienate everyone on the opposite side politically: teachers, GLBT's, women, unions, environmentalists, academics, public servants, city dwellers, etc. The people who stand against Christie REALLY don't like him.
• Now he's kicked his supporters in the teeth: all the suburbanites who voted for him have seen their state aid gutted, their services slashed, and their taxes go up. Worse, now he blames THEM for the problems he's created.

The only people Christie hasn't screwed over yet are the corporate and elite interests who've been backing him. Now we're starting to find out who those people are. How long before his bumbling makes him useless to them?

Remember: