Chris Christie: It's about me
Barb ShellyNew Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, the keynote speaker Tuesday night at the Republican National Convention, went 15 minutes or so into his address before he got around to mentioning Mitt Romney by name. This led a number of politicians and pundits to speculate that the speech was more about promoting Christie’s prospects for 2016 than advancing his party’s 2012 ticket.
Rachel Maddow at MSNBC called the speech “a remarkable act of political selfishness.”
Keynote addresses are about setting a tone, and the speakers often tell their own stories. An Illinois state senator named Barack Obama introduced himself to the nation in an autobiographical speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention.
That said, mentions of this year’s GOP presidential nominee were unusually sparse in Christie’s speech. He used Mitt Romney’s name only seven times, while using the “I” word more than three dozen times.
In comparison, Obama mentioned his party’s nominee, John Kerry, 13 times in his 2004 keynote speech. That same year, disgruntled Democrat Zell Miller, a senator from Georgia, blasted his own party in the keynote address of the GOP National Convention. He mentioned nominee George W. Bush eight times, while using most of his speaking window to lambast Kerry.
If not mentioning your opponent is selfish, then former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani gets the unselfish award for recent conventions. He mentioned GOP nominee John McCain 28 times in his keynote speech. At the Democratic convention, former Virginia Gov. Mark Warner spoke Obama’s name 10 times.
So, if we’re keeping count, Christie gave Romney short shrift in his address. Make of it what you will. It’s not likely to have much lasting effect.
Kent Mueller
8 months, 3 weeks agoBarb, again you have very selective auditory senses. I have never seen you write about how our current President say “I” so many times whenever he speaks. It has been very obvious over these four years that he talks about himself a lot. Much more than others. Again, quite selective auditory senses you have.
George Hunsucker
Northland
8 months, 3 weeks agoWhy Kent, the way you are talking about the big 0, one would think he was some kind of narcissistic person.
We all “know” from his level of charitable giving, and his VP’s also, compared to Romney & Ryan, this just couldn’t be true. Also, his association for over 20 years with the rev. wright showed him to be a truly caring person, not so self-centered…
Yep, jimmy II is truly one of the people and we have ms. shelly to thank for exposing that self-centered GOP’er…..
George Hunsucker
Northland
8 months, 3 weeks agoWait a minute Chuck, who ever said they were not proud of America?
Oh, that’s right, that was that woman of the people, michelle, wasn’t it? Something like “for the first time in my life” I’m proud to be an American. This, after America gave her an opportunity to educate herself and a 300K+ “job” as a “community” something for a Chicago hospital…
But she’s not narcisisstic also, is she???
Brandon Lewis
8 months, 3 weeks agoHow many times must we play the game: “I know you are but what am I”?
It’s tired, old and we all know the talking points.
I got next!
George Hunsucker
Northland
8 months, 3 weeks agoMaybe ms. shelly will pen a blog post on this show of lib “civility”….
http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2012/08/yahoo-news-fires-david-chalian-source-133662.html
George Hunsucker
Northland
8 months, 3 weeks agoI guess we keep correcting you libs Brandon until you stop the slimming…..
Kent Mueller
8 months, 3 weeks agoBrandon. Being the only major daily in the metro area, the Star’s Editorial Board goes unchallenged. Other than here, of course. I have no problem pointing out the blindness of their work.
Mark Hastert
8 months, 3 weeks ago“We are the ones we have been waiting for,”
Aw geez Chuck, get it right will ya? That is a quote from a poem by Alice Walker. You heard but you didn’t listen. The except from the speech is on You Tube if you’d like to hear it in context…. Is it any wonder??
As to Christie, check his record against his bluster. For all his self promotion unemployment in New Jersey is worse under his stewardship. He’s only been able to balance his budget to pay for his tax cuts with accounting tricks and by not making the states pension contributions. (Robbing retirees to give tax cuts, sound familiar?) His promised increased revenues haven’t materialized. He’s a hoax. To top it off he’s a bully. Every time he’s asked an uncomfortable question he goes into bluster mode and dodges the question. I actually heard him tell a questioner tho back off because he (Christie) was a former prosecutor and as if imbued with polemic super powers. I get it, he’s fun to watch but Romney was smart not to put him on the ticket. Ryan is enough of a handicap.
George Hunsucker
Northland
8 months, 3 weeks agoWhere is the outrage for the names Mia Love is being called today by the oh soooooooooo tolerant libs?
Names like whore and the infamous house N_. Have you libs no pride to call these sick people out? Where is lewis the racial hawk????
Kent Mueller
8 months, 3 weeks agoYou got your answer, George. The left doesn’t do any policing of it’s fellow left.But they are damn sure that Tea Party is a bunch of racist buggers, though.
Mark Hastert
8 months, 3 weeks ago“Names like whore and the infamous house N”
Whoever hacked her wikipedia page was completely beyond the bounds of decency. Let me be the first smart lib to say that any of that sort of thing is absolutely abhorrent, sexist and racist.
Now it’s your turn, about those GOP attendees in the convention center, peanut, and the CNN camera person. Got anything to say about that? After all these were credentialed attendees at the GOP convention, party faithful, official representatives so to speak. Their actions are certainly as egregious.
“damn sure that Tea Party is a bunch of racist buggers, though”
Apparently Kent, at least some are.
Kent Mueller
8 months, 3 weeks agoBarb, I just read your last sentence. If there is no importance to what you wrote, then why did you take the time to write it? Isn’t that demeaning to your body of work? Unless, of course, the objective was to smear. Opinion is opinion, but smearing is smearing. Not very becoming.
Mark Hastert
8 months, 3 weeks agoYa gotta love David Letterman, “…when Chris Christie talks for 45 minutes it’s usually into the clown face at Jack in the Box”
Phil Cardarella
8 months, 3 weeks agoTony Sophrano doing a hit on Herbert Hoover.
FYI: Herbert Hoover was a self-made semi-billionaire businessman who later put his immense talents (and charitable nature) to work keeping post-WWI Europe from starving. He went on to serve as Secretary of Commerce, a post for which he was well-qualified.
Then, he had the ill-fortune to become President just as the unregulated markets worked their magic and created the Great Depression. There, the last highly successful businessman to serve as President conducted a four-year demonstration of how the skill-set and mind-set that make a great entreprenuer are disasterous when serving as President.
40% unemployment. Farms foreclosed. Banks collapsing. Starving children. Bread lines. Machine-guns on the Capitol steps. And the cavalry — yes, literlally the cavalry — called out to attack homeless American veterans camped in our capital city.
Herbert Hoover was a brilliant, kind, generous human being who helped save millions of Europeans from starving. But, he was also a “businessman” so in thrall to the Gods of the Market that he could not act to save Americans from the same fate.
You see, you cannot leverage, bankrupt, down-size and out-source a nation out of a recession, Mitt. Even if you are the brightest guy in the room, you have to have some idea of the difference between investing and governing. And giving money to your church — while sometimes admirable — is no substitute for paying the taxes needed to build America’s infrastructure.
It took a “second-rate intellect” who had never “met a payroll” like FDR to save this nation from collapse into chaos or fascism — and set the stage for American greatness.
Kent Mueller
8 months, 3 weeks agoLeave it up to Phil to discuss causes of the Great Depression and to never even mention Smoot-Hawley. Amazing.
If FDR and Keynes were so right, why was the unemployment rate over 14% for a decade? It took principles far closer to those of F.A. Hayek to get the economic engine running following WWII. Don’t forget, Keynes predicted economic chaos as for when the war was to end. He couldn’t have been more wrong. That pretty much bring all of his work in to question when he was that wrong by following his principles.
You also continue your onslaught of misinformation as to how Bain did business. You say leverage. Sure money was borrowed. That is how the former ARMCO steel plant workers had 8 additional years of employment. They borrowed and invested over 100 million in plant and equipment. Even Democrats are saying Bain was not a leverage buyout company.
You said bankrupt. Bain specialized in purchasing troubled companies. Not all of them succeeded. Bankruptcy is part of life when you buy troubled assets. The jobs those companies lost would have been lost anyway. Bain, and therefore, Romney is responsible for creating an incredible number of jobs.
You said down-sized. So? If that is the best way to keep the company open, then that saves those jobs that are left. Again, Bain was not a vulture takeover firm. Leading Democrats are saying that. I know Obama said they were a vulture capitalist company, but other leading Democrats have said Obama is wrong about that. Because he is. And so are you, Phil.
You said out-source. That is such an overused, worn out canard. Yes, there is something called out sourcing. Trouble is, the left, as Phil just did, mislead about it. Bain did not have a record of closing plants and moving them overseas. Now, Obama’s stimulus money went overseas, but that is a different blog, I guess. If you go through Bain’s thousand upon thousands of transactions, I presume you can find where some assets went overseas. So? That’s called the world economy. The last time we refused to participate in the world economy was the Smoot Hawley tariffs that Phil forgot to mention earlier. Let’s don’t go there again.