Chris Wallace started the criticism right after Christie’s keynote address at the GOP convention. He was counting the minutes until Christie mentioned Romney in the speech. He said it was 17 minutes into the speech.
I wasn’t counting the minutes, I was just listening to the meat of the speech.
Christie said the country was in trouble, serious trouble. He said drastic action was needed to fix the problems. He said you can’t make decisions based on polls, you made decisions that change the polls. He said it is more important to be respected than to be loved. He was speaking of leadership, Ann Romney was giving the love speech.
He contrasted the position of the parties. Democrats as the party of big government and big spending. Republicans needed get back to being the party of smaller government, less regulation, and lower taxes.
Here was his point. New Jersey was in serious trouble when he took over as governor. A republican governor in a democratic state. He has demonstrated that attacking the problems that face America can be solved. But, to do so leaders must tell the truth. Lay out the problems clearly and lay out the solutions and sacrifices that must be made to fix them.
Christie is the anti-Obama. Obama hides the problems, delays action, places blame, and the problems fester and grow. Christie gave the blueprint for fixing the problems. And, he described the type of leadership it will take to implement the strategy.
I saw Christie’s speech as a challenge to Romney. He endorsed Romney and Ryan as the people who can get it done. Like many of you, I don’t see a lot of Christie in Romney, but I may be misjudging him. If I have a criticism of Chritie’s speech it is the lost opportunity to include his fellow Republican governors like Scott Walker and John Kasich who have done the same jobs as Christie with similar results.
Christie is right. This country can be fixed if Obama doesn’t get four more years to destroy it beyond repair. But, it will take Christie-type leadership and solid communications to the public to get it done.
If we can watch that debt clock tick past the 16 trillion dollar mark before the convention ends and believe everything is OK in America, and Obama is fine, we deserve what is coming. But, as Christie said our kids and grand kids don’t.
The few million left from the greatest generation must think we are complete losers. Sitting on our duffs and watching our kid’s future circle the drain and doing little to stop it is unthinkable to our seniors.