Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey is taking his time deciding whether or not to join the several states in their legal challenge of Obamacare. Christie has said since March that he is consulting closely with state AG Paula Dow and Health and Senior Services Commissioner Dr. Poonam Alaigh, a former insurance executive, to examine the merits of the constitutional case and better guage the ACA’s potential impact on the state. But the governor hasn’t given any strong hints that he is leaning in one direction or another.

That’s quite understandable, if you ask me. While New Jersey’s addition to the roster of states fighting Obamacare would be significant — it would, alongside Pennsylvania and Michigan, give the challenge a trio of deep-blue states that went heavy for Obama in 2008 — it might also make Christie’s job righting the ship in Trenton even harder.

And that isn’t because Obamacare is so popular in the Garden State (New Jerseyans were as skeptical as most of the country about the advertised benefits of the health-care bill) or because Obama himself is especially popular there (he’s sitting at 49 percent). It’s because Christie needs the continued compliance, or at least the neutrality, of the Democrat-controlled state Senate to enact his reform agenda, and that body is urging the governor to pass on the suit. Don’t get me wrong, Christie’s relationship with the legislature is already combative, but the fact that the senate voted 28-3 to dismantle the Council on Affordable Housing*, the institutional centerpiece of New Jersey’s version of the Great Society, is unbelievable enough that I’m afraid any additional executive-legislative amity might wake us up from this wonderful dream.

*Created as a result of a series of well-intentioned state supreme court decisions, COAH has become a bureaucratic nightmare of almost federal proportions, insinuating itself into the minutest details of every condo cul-de-sac or duplex proposal put before every planning commission and zoning board throughout the state.