Via The Hill: Christie rebukes Trump: ‘It is time to stop whispering. … It is time to stop being afraid of any one person’. First, better late than never, but Christie kowtowed pretty heavily to Trump, so it will take a while for me to take this seriously. Second, I remember Ted Cruz trying to take a brave stand against Trump at the Republican National Convention and then not long thereafter having to take Trump’s insults about his father and his wife, so we’ll see.
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor of Political Science and a College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog).
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I’m surprised by that link to FOX reporting little Donnie doesn’t want to come out and play with the Justice Department. But surprised only in that FOX has been so assiduously ignoring TFG since he announced. And I’m commenting on it mostly to prime the pump. Hello? where is everybody?
While rightwingers in the US believe, or pretend to believe, that the platform restricts their freedom, and say it loudly, on Twitter of course, the over 80% of its users who live outside the country have a very different experience, in which Twitter’s ability to protect civic speech rights, commitment to guaranteeing the privacy of those who wish to remain anonymous, and ability to ferret out and identify misinformation work together to create a forum for free expression that they might not be able to find anywhere else, as Rishi Iyengar writes at Foreign Policy:
” … The company’s user base around the world numbers in the hundreds of millions, and while that is far smaller than social media competitors such as Meta, YouTube, and TikTok, Twitter plays an outsized role in hosting and driving the global conversation. It is used by world leaders, government agencies, dissidents, activists, and journalists—in many cases against each other.
In the past, Twitter has stood up for freedom of expression and human rights against governments that wish to curb those rights. In India, it filed a lawsuit against the government over demands to take down numerous accounts. In Nigeria, Twitter was banned for seven months after it took down a tweet by the country’s president, Muhammadu Buhari, that was interpreted as threatening violence against protesters. (The platform was reinstated earlier this year after Twitter pledged to establish an office and appoint a representative in the country.) … ”
Christie is trying to stay relevant, but he’s in a no-man’s land as far as his own political future is concerned. He long ago ruined whatever good will he once had with Jersey voters, partly due to Bridgegate, partly due to his groveling before Trump in 2016. (There’s a significant chance he would have ended up as Trump’s running mate if not for his bad blood with the Kushners, having been the prosecutor who put Jared’s dad in prison. Most of the inside reports I’ve read suggest Trump was leaning toward picking Christie until Jared & Ivanka talked him out of it and pushed him toward Pence.) But he was never on good terms with the right (who never forgave him for embracing Obama–literally and figuratively–during Hurricane Sandy), and he certainly isn’t ingratiating himself with them now.
Of course, none of that means he won’t be a common sight on the Sunday talk shows in the years to come. The corporate media always seems to gravitate toward figures like this, and in fact I think his general appeal was always overstated due to this crowd. Even back during his best days–between the time he first won the governorship to just after his landslide reelection in 2013–there was never much evidence he had the kind of broad national popularity that the fawning coverage of him implied.
Sometimes I just want to take reporters and shake ‘em! Today I came across an article in the new local paper, The Baltimore Banner, and I was excited to read it, “What makes Baltimore beautiful: Beyond the White L to the Black Butterfly”. After all, my wife and I choose to live deep in the heart of Baltimore, and we are always up to see something we weren’t aware of, or revisit something we had forgotten about. And then… the author spends the first 10 paragraphs talking about how unfair it is that these hidden gems don’t get included on any lists, without noting a specific one or giving an address. Finally, in the eleventh paragraph, she mentions a specific church and gives a link. That’s it. The remainder of the piece is about how much she loves and cares about these unnamed spaces.
The thing that’s so disturbing about Cruz is how he groveled to Trump after Trump had branded Rafael Cruz an assassin and grossly insulted Heidi Cruz.
I’m surprised by that link to FOX reporting little Donnie doesn’t want to come out and play with the Justice Department. But surprised only in that FOX has been so assiduously ignoring TFG since he announced. And I’m commenting on it mostly to prime the pump. Hello? where is everybody?
@gVOR08:
Are you and I in a relay race?
Lots of places, cruising around. Found this for example:
http://yastreblyansky.blogspot.com/2022/11/twitter-is-people.html
Lots more at the link of course.
Christie is trying to stay relevant, but he’s in a no-man’s land as far as his own political future is concerned. He long ago ruined whatever good will he once had with Jersey voters, partly due to Bridgegate, partly due to his groveling before Trump in 2016. (There’s a significant chance he would have ended up as Trump’s running mate if not for his bad blood with the Kushners, having been the prosecutor who put Jared’s dad in prison. Most of the inside reports I’ve read suggest Trump was leaning toward picking Christie until Jared & Ivanka talked him out of it and pushed him toward Pence.) But he was never on good terms with the right (who never forgave him for embracing Obama–literally and figuratively–during Hurricane Sandy), and he certainly isn’t ingratiating himself with them now.
Of course, none of that means he won’t be a common sight on the Sunday talk shows in the years to come. The corporate media always seems to gravitate toward figures like this, and in fact I think his general appeal was always overstated due to this crowd. Even back during his best days–between the time he first won the governorship to just after his landslide reelection in 2013–there was never much evidence he had the kind of broad national popularity that the fawning coverage of him implied.
@Kylopod:
The MAGAs hate Christie’s guts. He wouldn’t make it past the primaries.
Sometimes I just want to take reporters and shake ‘em! Today I came across an article in the new local paper, The Baltimore Banner, and I was excited to read it, “What makes Baltimore beautiful: Beyond the White L to the Black Butterfly”. After all, my wife and I choose to live deep in the heart of Baltimore, and we are always up to see something we weren’t aware of, or revisit something we had forgotten about. And then… the author spends the first 10 paragraphs talking about how unfair it is that these hidden gems don’t get included on any lists, without noting a specific one or giving an address. Finally, in the eleventh paragraph, she mentions a specific church and gives a link. That’s it. The remainder of the piece is about how much she loves and cares about these unnamed spaces.
Where the heck was the editor?
Out checking the unnamed spaces?