Here in New Jersey — where for many of us it is day eight without power (or, if you’re counting, day six since Governor Christie and President Obama congratulated each other on what a great job they’d done) — our starstruck governor has apparently gotten over his weepies at Bruce Springsteen’s finally deigning to acknowledge his existence. Christie took a brief time-out from gushing over the president’s very presidential parading to blast ”know nothing, disgruntled Romney staffers” for making “noise” about his allegedly declining to appear on Sunday at a Romney campaign rally in the Philadelphia suburbs (i.e., conveniently close to Trenton).
Christie denies that there was any such invitation and insists he has had an understanding with Governor Romney: If the hurricane hit as it was forecast, he would not be asked to do any more Romney campaign events because his place would obviously be in New Jersey for Obama campaign events managing the crisis. While he did not go so far as to call these know-nothing disgruntled Romney staffers sharia “crazies”, Christie did grouse that they obviously figured Romney would lose and were therefore “try[ing] to look out for other people to blame” as their glory days passed them by.
No doubt Governor Romney continues to appreciate Governor Christie’s vital help in the stretch-run.
On Fox this morning, Rudy Giuliani had a somewhat different take. Asked to assess the Obama administration’s performance on Sandy, the mayor gave the president a grade of “F-, as bad as it gets.” He cited FEMA as especially incompetent for failing to take obvious steps (e.g., prepositioning water and generators, and stockpiling gasoline) and exacerbating these omissions by failing to fly such items in post-Sandy even though JFK airport has been reopened for several days now. Giuliani observed that despite Obama’s having actually done precious little to address the disaster, the press covered for him — on Sandy, as on Benghazi — in a way they never would for a Republican president . . . and then “Chris Christie embraced him,” praised him for doing a “great job,” and thus gave him an “undeserved” photo-op.