Dark dreams of Chris Christie

The Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin takes up the cri de coeur of New Jersey governor Chris Christie who, despite his conspicuous displays for Romney which materialized virtually the day after the Bush-family coup to displace Romney with Christie fell apart, is really running for President himself in 2016. It is dispiriting that none of the GOP presidential candidates can hold a room like Christie, she says: “But perhaps the winner will go to him at the end of a long, bloody campaign and say, ‘I need you. The party needs you. The country needs you.’ And if he accepts, then whatever the outcome of the presidential race Republicans would have something to cheer and an extraordinary politician to watch.”

The second establishment dream, Christie/Bush 2016, not far from the first (Romney/Christie 2012), has it that Obama wins in 2012 and the Republicans can get back again on automatic pilot with Christie/Jeb Bush in 2016. Kind of extraordinary when you think about it: Patronizing the Massachusetts Mormon so distasteful to the main line establishment to line up the proxy in 2012 to run and win in 2016. Better maybe they lose in 2012. For sure then it is Christie/Jeb Bush in 2016.

But the first dream is not yet shattered: Christie in a brokered convention.

Is there no more imagination than this in American conservatism?

I can think of no real purpose for Newt Gingrich and think he is half crazy. But so was John Brown. Possibly only Gingrich can rally the masses on the margins against the inevitable gentry establishment.