You’ve really got to see this. Each party has its blind spots created by culture, ideology and demography. But this is incredibly rich and riveting for what may seem to some of us – or rather I would assume, just about everyone – as something extremely, extremely obvious. The Republican House leadership has discovered that not everyone runs a small business and not everyone is hyper-focused on cutting regulations. And they have a new message for Republican members of Congress: Most people have (or try to have) jobs and work for others!
David Wildstein, the Christie appointee at the center of the BridgeGate scandal, says Christie knew and there’s proof.
Today’s events reminded me of this passage from a note from a TPM Reader who vividly remembered David Wildstein’s brief tenure as Mayor of Livingston, New Jersey …
Everyone I talk to agrees that closing lanes to get back at a mayor is right out of the Wildstein playbook. But since Wildstein is capable of anything, a lot of people also believe that he would have no problem saying Christie ordered him to close the lanes, whether it’s true or not. That explains the odd, erratic behavior from the Governor….he’s caught between a rock and a hard place.
Amidst new allegations, Christie introduces Bon Jovi at Howard Stern’s birthday party.
Thanks to The Smartest Kids In The World author Amanda Ripley for joining us for TPM Cafe Book Club this week. If you missed her great stuff you should check out her work (one, two, three, four and five) we published this week. Please consider buying her book if you liked what you read at TPM.
I’d also like to announce our next Book Club, which will be on The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee the week of Feb. 10-14. Buy it and read it so you have smart questions to ask when they stop by.
Ice fishermen reel as FAA shuts down beer-delivery drone service.
In case you missed them last week, two pieces on Pete Seeger. Here’s the the essay I wrote the day after Seeger died and here’s a remembrance of Seeger by Bruce Springsteen, with some thoughts of my own on the man who threaded the two lives together, John Hammond.
Early last week I started writing a piece about how Christie was already toast as a 2016 candidate; most people just didn’t realize it yet. I set it aside because I couldn’t get the writing quite right (a perk of being your own boss and editor). Yesterday I thought: this piece is going to get easier and easier to write the longer I let it sit! But of course the point of writing it also diminishes. Because people are starting to get that he’s done. (In other words, I missed my chance.)
Now we have Team Christie’s blistering retort to David Wildstein, published originally through Politico’s Mike Allen (errr, ‘leaked’, sorry). It only drives home the point more clearly: as a 2016 presidential candidate, he’s done.
As I wrote below, before Wildstein’s accusations, before this afternoon’s email, I thought Christie was toast. I think’s clear for the reasons I wrote, even if Christie is totally innocent and even if no smoking gun emerges. But I hadn’t sat long enough with the Christie letter to fully digest its implications. This email is purportedly if not from Christie himself then issued in his name and from his closest advisors. On that basis it reads like it’s coming from a person or a team who is way, way further gone than I had realized.
If you haven’t had a chance to look at Brian Murphy’s take on Christie’s desperate email fireball thrown at David Wildstein yesterday, definitely give it a look. In addition to having a really strong grasp of New Jersey politics, Murphy used to work for Wildstein. So it gives him a unique perspective.
But there’s another aspect of this. The more I think about this letter, I don’t think it’s from Christie and Co. I think the author is Chris Christie. He may not have typed it out himself. But down to pretty specific details included I think this came from him.