As I'm writing this, Gov. Chris Christie is at the front of a full crowd at conservative think-tank American Enterprise Institute, giving what is being called a major speech certain to raise expectations about Christie as a 2012 presidential candidate. He wasn't at last weekend's CPAC conference but he did just come in 3rd in their presidential straw poll (at a whopping 6% behind zero-chance Ron Paul and Mitt Romney. Christie's not running for President in 2012, but he sure-enough likes to be begged to come to the dance, so he can demur in that manly way he has.
I'll run video of the speech as soon as I get it. Embed code for live streaming wasn't available. But we do know - hat/tip to alert Blue Jerseyan DSWright that when Christie claimed a few minutes ago that he never worked in Trenton before he was governor, he was full of it. As DSWright points out, Christie was a registered statehouse lobbyist before he was governor and his claims that he was anything else than a Trenton insider are bullshit.
So, what else is Christie avoiding? Boil down his speech today and what you get is yet another Christie victory lap before an adoring audience of wet-dream Republicans who want all the juicy details of how he won his war with New Jersey teachers and their union. This is Christie, egoist, talking about his scores for an audience eager for a how-to. But while Christie gets his chance to strut (yet again, and increasingly out-of-Jersey) for the anti-union crowd, what he's not talking about is what most of his constituents are worried about - jobs, the work that New Jersey's economy and its family security depends on. New Jersey lost 16,300 jobs in December; nationwide, the labor force gained 103,000 jobs. You can trace the slight drop in NJ unemployment rate to the fact that 3,700 workers just dropped right out of the labor force. Christie's much-vaunted reform agenda doesn't include job creation, and the governor is still silent on the package of bills passed by the legislature meant to stimulate economy and create jobs for New Jerseyans.
While Christie was going on about his glory days, the NJ Dems put out a video, to that point:
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