Chris Christie, Regionalism, and His Progressive Agenda
“We’ve gone astray from first principles. We’ve lost sight of the rule that individual freedom and ingenuity are at the very core of everything we’ve accomplished. Government’s first duty is to protect the people, not run their lives.” - Ronald Reagan
This is my first post here in The Trenches but in being an avid reader, I’ll spare the overall argument of why New Jersey Governor Chris Christie isn’t a conservative. It has nothing to do with his praising of President Obama in the middle of a heated election cycle. Instead, it has more to do with what he doesn’t know or fails to comprehend when it comes to policies he supports and his less-than-founding principles stand on many issues in his state and in our grand republic. Or, like so many “lapse liberals,” perhaps he’s just gravitating to his true inner dialogue. We’ll see how long it takes us to find out which.
One of the less scrimmaged criticisms of Christie is of his either ignorance of the dangers of – or support of – the concept of regionalism.
For those new to the concept, regionalism boiled down to its core construct is paying for decaying urban city core services, improvements, and other needs by taxing the wealthier and more well-managed suburban areas. It’s a core belief of President Obama and many other liberal community organizers who view the well-maintained suburbs as fertile ground to help pay for areas who aren’t pulling their own weight.
As a primer for those with more interest in understanding regionalism, I highly recommend reading Stanley Kurtz’s “Spreading the Wealth: How Obama is Robbing the Suburbs to Pay for the Cities.” Although Kurtz’s “conservative” credentials stand up better than many of the faux-conservatives you often read about in this space, his work in this area is quite good and in line with founding principles around the role of taxation and how limited it should be.
At any rate, let’s get back to Governor Big Boy.
Christie has undoubtedly made a big splash (pun very much intended) in establishment Republican circles. He gave a brash and visible speech at the hijacked GOP Convention in 2012 and was even considered as a running mate for Mitt Romney. The media love him even when he expresses views counter to their Marxist leanings. Much like Rudy Giuliani, Christie is an east coast “conservative” who the massive mainstream media machine can accept. They cover him constantly and he’s the crazy conservative uncle they find in common not to vilify and crucify.
Christie also received credit for being “bipartisan” during the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy and its unprecedented destruction in New York and New Jersey. Because Christie embraced the President just a week before the election, and praised him for coming to New Jersey, the media lapdogs quickly lauded his show of bipartisanship further driving his stock up. This was “conservative” Republican the intelligentsia set could relate to.
Christie’s support of regionalism is perhaps another reason why the media has thus far been favorable to him. As a governor in a heavily Democratic state, Christie may have an air of combativeness about him when it comes to partisan issues (like education and health care), but with other rights issues he seems to have an evolving view. While decrying raising taxes (something all politicians are worried about declaring for fear of losing power), Christie also has tacitly supported regionalism projects and proposals.
One such proposal Christie supported was the regionalization of the police force in Camden, New Jersey. Camden, a town where crime is a constant problem, couldn’t keep its police force funded. As this Fox News story back in August reports, when the City of Camden announced it might need to scrap its police force due to budget cuts, Christie threw his support behind absorbing the police department into a County organization. In fact, the City of Camden lost control of its police department back in 2005 when the State agreed to take it over. Now, with that agreement set to expire, Christie and the rest of the regionalism crowd wanted to pass on the cost to the suburban members of the community via county control.
“A county police force that has a reasonable contract, and that’s going to provide a huge increase in the number of police officers on the streets here in Camden, is a win for everybody,” Christie was quoted as saying in the Fox News story. “I’m willing to put my name on the line for this concept.”
What Christie didn’t mention (again out of ignorance or malice) was the shifting of funds from other areas of the county to the City of Camden means those areas will have less enforcement, less cops on the streets and almost certainly higher crime. But because those areas are primarily white, suburban and more affluent, the feeling was it could be absorbed. That’s a constant declaration from the regionalism cronies: they don’t need the police out there anyway.
Regionalism is nothing more than redistribution of wealth. It’s not to say local municipalities shouldn’t cooperate. There’s also regional interest like airports, transportation hubs or even convention centers that need a regional funding arm. But overall the desire of politicos like Christie and Obama is to drain the surrounding suburban areas to benefit those constituencies in the urban core.
Christie is no conservative warrior. Like the current establishment GOP – including the Necons, RINOS and the rest of the jackals – he’s an unprincipled personality who will bend with the wind depending on what’s politically expedient to him.
As much as he has been lauded for his handling of the Hurricane Sandy disaster, yet even in that difficult time, Christie made a bad choice showing his true spotlight-loving nature. He appeared on NBC’s Saturday Night Live making fun of his role and the situation. He was widely criticized for it as well. But it shows the psychology of the man and why he’s not someone to be trusted.
The complete lack of Federalist principles becomes even more apparent when you dig deeper into Christie’s views. Here’s a list of more areas that expose him for the true left-of-center leader he truly is:
- Christie is on record as saying he supports gun control laws. While he couches it by saying “some,” the reality is he’s no friend or supporter of the 2nd Amendment.
- The greatest support Christie relies on is the ideological middle. Today’s ideological middle is not what it used to be and the Governor’s lack of true principles shines through when you evaluate where he has the greatest support
- Christie has embraced government and the funding of the expansion of government. For all the credit he gets for attacking teachers unions, and other organized labor, he’s done little to shrink government and to shutter ineffective and costly government programs in his State. He’s a statist and his record clearly shows it.
Lastly, Christie would be a loser for the establishment GOP and for the conservative movement. If you rehash, review and dissect the 2012 Presidential election, you’ll find the similarities between Mitt Romney and Christie are striking. It’s the reason he wasn’t selected as Romney’s running mate – the establishment wanted Paul Ryan to make the ticket more conservative. Despite ignoring the fact Ryan was not as conservative as they made him out to be, the campaign realized Christie was a carbon copy of Romney. To run Christie out there as a “conservative” candidate would assure another four years of Democrats in the White House.
At a critical juncture for this nation, the last thing conservatives need is another pretender. Returning to the true conservative principles is the only way the movement will make resurgence is by being principled.
Chris Christie is not a conservative, not a principled leader, and not someone those of us who support these ideals should support.
He’s all hat and no cattle.
