House And Senate GOP Take Note: Christie Disapproval Ratings Up Because Of His Budget Actions
This has to be disconcerting to congressional Republicans: As this story by Elise Young at Bloomberg shows, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, the darling of those who want to cut spending and not increase taxes, is in serious political trouble in his state because of his willingness to cut spending and not increase taxes.
To certain extent this is anything but surprising. As Bruce and I have talked about almost incessantly here at CG&G since the start of the year, polls have consistently shown that, while a majority wants "spending" reduced when you talk about it in a generic sense, a majority doesn't support cutting anything specific other than foreign aid and gets angry when actual cuts are made. The Bloomberg poll also shows New Jersey voter anger over spending increases that Christie didn't approve.
Have you seen this?
So what? Have you seen this:
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/obama_administra...
This blog is too one-sided...
I love it!
Complain the blog is one-sided and then link to a pollster known to be a GOP backer!
Polls are meaningless until Labor Day 2012.
LOL !!
Let's see here. New Jersey is a Blue State. Christie won with 49% of the vote and now he's pissed off a few more democrats. Big deal
I would have voted for him had I lived in NJ ( although I lost a lot of respect for him over the helicopter BS ) but if the worst thing that happens is that people are angry over him cutting spending and not increasing taxes it will just show how dumb some people are in the Northeast. ( For the record I'm for cutting spending AND increasing taxes )
First NJ is a Democratic
First NJ is a Democratic state - the last time it's Electoral Votes went to a Republican was when Bush 41 defeated Dukakis and it gave double-digit margins to Obama and Gore (high single to Kerry). He beat Corzine - who was just god-awful - by only 70,000 votes. To be sure Christie is doing what he said he would do, but he never had a huge mandate.
Second NJ is your classic socially moderate state and I don't think his comments about not being willing to sign same-sex marriage into law jive with the NJ populace (they may help him with Republican primary voters of course).
Third, his anti-teacher/anti-union rhetoric do turn people off after a point. That is I think people, at the individual level, mostly like the teachers of their children even if collectively they have issues with the benefits. And as someone who is broadly sympathetic to what he is trying to do on pension and cost reform (and who also acknowledged the teacher union is hardly the paragon of virtue) I just don't tie his comments to my son's 2nd grade teacher. Perhaps it is style over substance but style does matter (and his style in part counts for his popularity, so you can't have it both ways).
I live in Juhsey (not
I live in Juhsey (not Joisey!)
As the previous post suggested, Christie won largely because Corzine was a godawful governor. Corzine fit the voters' ideological profile pretty well, but everybody understood that the state was a fiscal trainwreck and Corzine couldn't or didn't do too much about it.
Christie delivered and is delivering some fiscal improvement. But voters are beginning to realize that his union-bashing is not the means to the fiscal improvement--his union-bashing is his end, with fiscal health just the excuse. That's not very popular in this state. And the fiscal improvement is not very impressive.
I think that the consensus in my beautiful state is that Christie is running for the Vice-Presidential nomination, not reelection. (The sheen of motor oil on water is a beautiful thing. Gotta problem?)