Byron York has been watching the latest GOP cattle call in New Hampshire, and he thinks
Chris Christie is poised for a comeback:
Chris Christie is poised to re-emerge after a number of early death pronouncements. There is a reason people liked the New Jersey governor before he became mired in the bridge scandal. Once a favorite of a lot of establishment GOP poobahs, Christie went down, down, down after problems at home and his decision (hesitation?) to hold off on campaigning while rivals got the jump on him. But Christie has an undeniable appeal to voters on the stump, and now that he is finally out on the stump, they're getting a chance to see it. Look for his stock to rise.
I've told you why I think Christie is toast -- primarily the embrace of President Obama after Sandy, and, beyond that, not so much Bridgegate itself as the fact that Bridgegate made him a laughingstock in "the liberal media" rather than a guy who verbally slapped down liberal critics and thwarted unions. But if all that's not enough to sink him in the Republican primaries, there's
this:
Chris Christie took a centrist tone on guns Wednesday, calling for the “right balance” between gun control and the Second Amendment.
“We’ve got to make sure we have public safety, but on the other hand we have to protect people’s rights both as sportsmen and hunters and for self protection too, find the right balance,” Christie told a group of New Hampshire voters at Chez Vachon in Manchester, according to New Jersey newspaper The Record.
The comments came just over a week after news broke that the New Jersey Republican governor was not invited to address the NRA’s annual conference in Nashville last weekend.
As
Jazz Shaw writes at Hot Air:
Christie hasn’t been a simple bystander. He signed a raft of gun bills in 2013, one of which required the state to turn over New Jersey mental health records to the feds. Others were just as disturbing. If he felt that this is what he had to do in order to “go along to get along” in the Garden State, that was his choice, but that’s something he’ll be held accountable for in the national race he’s pondering now. And when he answers questions like this when discussing gun control on the national stage, well... I wouldn’t expect his NRA “C” rating to be going up any time soon.
Christie has a "C" rating from the NRA? And, unlike, say, John Kasich, who
once backed an assault weapons ban but now
does what the NRA wants him to do, Christie hasn't become significantly more conservative on guns over the years? Then why have we
ever talked about him as a potential Republican presidential nominee?
