Every election cycle can be considered, first and foremost, a monument to hype. With every passing week, the political world is a blizzard of brash predictions, bold pronouncements, and bad advice. This year, your Speculatroners shall attempt to decode and defang this world with a regular dispatch that we’re calling “This Week In Coulda Shoulda Maybe.” We hope this helps, but as always, we make no guarantees!
As New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie was still settling into his swivel chair at this week’s Conservative Political Action Conference, his interlocutor for the Q&A session, conservative talk-radio host Laura Ingraham, began by asking about his “rough couple of months … in the media.”
“They just want to kill ya,” Christie said, “but I’m still standing.” Christie was, at the time, referring semi-explicitly to The New York Times. “I don’t subscribe, by the way,” Christie said, to a smattering of applause. Moments later, he had another quip for the Grey Lady. “I went to my parish priest and said I’m giving up The New York Times for Lent,” Christie joked. “Bad news: He said you have to give up something you’ll actually miss.”
Pro tip for anyone who wants to demonstrate that the media isn’t living rent-free in your head: Maybe just pick one funny story about how you gave up reading The New York Times.
But Ingraham couldn’t have been more right about Christie’s recent woes. In the last two weeks especially, it seems as if the political press has decided en masse to start spading the graveyard soil over Christie’s once-lush aspirations for higher office. There is varying enthusiasm for the duty.
NBC News’ Perry Bacon has discussed the “growing skepticism from influential Republicans about his likely presidential run.” Politico’s “caucus” of Iowa insiders couldn’t find a place for Christie in their deliberations. FiveThirtyEight’s Harry Enten, after examining the ratio of name recognition and net favorability among the potential GOP candidates, offered up this 16-word coffin nail: “Chris Christie, the Republican governor of New Jersey, is well known, but not particularly well liked.”
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Hillary Clinton should talk about income inequality. Jeb Bush should take a position on the wars his brother started. Rand Paul should gird his loins for a challenge from Wall Street’s elite. Scott Walker should “resist the pull from the right to define himself in ways that make him less attractive to other segments of the party and to a general electorate.”
And Joe Biden? Well, some say he should run for president, others would like to see him stay the vice president until the end of time. Either way, he has got to stop touching people in weird ways.
We’ll Leave You With This, Whatever This Is
There’s no doubt that Jeb Bush dreamed of the day he would tweet about having to follow the dude from Duck Dynasty at CPAC.
Backstage here at #CPAC2015, just waiting for Phil Robertson to wrap up! pic.twitter.com/PSIt86QcZy
— Jeb Bush (@JebBush) February 27, 2015
