WHY RUPERT MURDOCH AND ROGER AILES DON'T NEED VIAGRA

I think some people are drawing precisely the wrong conclusion in response to this:

In an angry moment caught on video, Gov. Chris Christie let loose on an identified critic on the Seaside Heights boardwalk Thursday night — gesturing with one hand as he held an ice cream cone in the other.

According to the website TMZ.com, which obtained the video, Christie was in Seaside Heights with his family on Thursday when a passerby made a "snide" remark about his education policy....

"You’re a real big shot," Christie, yelled as he walked toward the man. "You’re a real big shot shooting your mouth off."

The man shouted back "Nah, just take care of the teachers."

As the man was leaving, Christie said "keep walking away. Really good. Keep walking," and then was gently guided away by a man in his entourage....

Doug Mataconis of Outside the Beltway responds with a post titled "In Case You Were Looking for Proof That Chris Christie Will Not Be Vice-President." Jazz Shaw, who writes for Hot Air and the Moderate Voice, titles his post "Chris Christie: Too Confrontational for VP?"

Now let's look at the thrilled reaction in Murdoch Land:





Interesting that this happened on Thursday -- the same day that The New York Times ran a story about recent Murdochian attacks on Mitt Romney (in Murdoch's Twitter feed, on the Wall Street Journal editorial page). That Times story included the following paragraph:

Along with Roger Ailes, chairman of Fox News, Mr. Murdoch urged Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey to run. Both men admire Mr. Christie's gusto and toughness -- a sharp edge they have themselves. "He really wanted Christie," said one of Mr. Murdoch's friends. Mr. Ailes, a former campaign strategist for Richard M. Nixon and Ronald Reagan, shares Mr. Murdoch's disdain of how the Romney campaign is being run, telling people privately that it is too soft.

Jazz Shaw thinks Christie's public combativeness tells the world he doesn't have the gravitas for higher office, but Shaw believes Christie might see the confrontations as a shrewd political move:

Another possibility is that Christie reacted this way in a very deliberate manner to keep up his image as a no-nonsense, take no prisoners kind of guy who doesn't suffer fools gladly. Whenever he takes somebody to task, such as calling a reporter stupid, I can't help but feel that he not only enjoys it, but that its a very purposeful move with political strategy in mind.

Yup -- and that strategy might be this: keep impressing Murdoch and Ailes, then hope they'll pressure Romney to take Christie on as a running mate.

After watching Romney's recent flip-flop on whether the penalties in the Obama health care law constitute a tax, I think Christie might have reason to believe Romney will cave in to this sort of pressure. Or, alternately, Christie's thinking that Romney is about to lose; the right-wing post-mortem on a Romney loss will be that he was too wussy -- therefore who deserves to be the front-runner for 2016?