ANDREW C. McCARTHY
National Review Online
National Review Online
This “sharia-law business is crap . . . and I’m tired of dealing with the crazies!” So blustered Chris Christie. Bluster is the New Jersey governor’s default mode. It has certainly served him well. When directed at surly advocates of New Jersey’s teachers’ unions — who, after all, deserve it — bluster can apparently make a conservative heartthrob out of a pol whose bite is bipartisan moderate, however titillating his bark may be.
The style is so effective that Christie seems to be trying it out on everyone. A few weeks back, a local reporter had the audacity to ask His Honor whether he believes in creationism or evolution — a question that seemed more pertinent than impertinent in light of the controversy over whether the former ought to be taught in the schools that the governor’s 9 million constituents subsidize to the tune of $11 billion annually. Yet his answer was to growl, “That’s none of your business.”
“None of your business,” has moved to the front of the Christie repertoire. So discovered a citizen who recently had the temerity to ask her governor why he does not send his children to the public schools whose bloated budgets he is trying to pare. It was a pretty tame question, one customarily asked of politicians who crow about the alleged greatness of our public-education system while opting out of it when it comes to their own kids.
As it happened, the governor had a compelling, three-part answer: Like other New Jersey homeowners, he pays the exorbitant property taxes that subsidize the state’s public-employee pensions . . . er, I mean, public schools. Second, the Christies, like many parents, choose parochial schools so their kids get religious instruction. Third, Christie’s fiduciary obligation as governor requires his best judgment about what’s right for the state and its schools, regardless of what private choices he makes for his own family. Perfect. Except Christie couldn’t help being Christie: Even as he made it his business to share these convincing views, the state’s top public servant couldn’t resist telling his public, “It’s none of your business. I don’t ask you where you send your kids to school, don’t bother me about where I send mine.” Probably best not to ask him about charm school.
Former Bush speechwriter Pete Wehner, whose monitory posts at Commentary’s “Contentions” blog frequently stress the need for civility in public discourse, evidently missed these and other Christie gems. But Pete certainly caught this week’s diatribe against the “sharia crazies,” and it’s got him just as goose-bumpy as the Washington Post’s left-wing blogger Greg Sargent.
According to Pete, “unfair animus toward Muslim Americans” is among the “troubling tendencies” in today’s conservatism, particularly among the tea-party types who are the bête noir of establishment GOP commissars of compassion. That’s why Pete is “grateful,” he continued, that Christie “spoke out in defense of his appointment of Sohail Mohammed to a state bench.”
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See also:The style is so effective that Christie seems to be trying it out on everyone. A few weeks back, a local reporter had the audacity to ask His Honor whether he believes in creationism or evolution — a question that seemed more pertinent than impertinent in light of the controversy over whether the former ought to be taught in the schools that the governor’s 9 million constituents subsidize to the tune of $11 billion annually. Yet his answer was to growl, “That’s none of your business.”
“None of your business,” has moved to the front of the Christie repertoire. So discovered a citizen who recently had the temerity to ask her governor why he does not send his children to the public schools whose bloated budgets he is trying to pare. It was a pretty tame question, one customarily asked of politicians who crow about the alleged greatness of our public-education system while opting out of it when it comes to their own kids.
As it happened, the governor had a compelling, three-part answer: Like other New Jersey homeowners, he pays the exorbitant property taxes that subsidize the state’s public-employee pensions . . . er, I mean, public schools. Second, the Christies, like many parents, choose parochial schools so their kids get religious instruction. Third, Christie’s fiduciary obligation as governor requires his best judgment about what’s right for the state and its schools, regardless of what private choices he makes for his own family. Perfect. Except Christie couldn’t help being Christie: Even as he made it his business to share these convincing views, the state’s top public servant couldn’t resist telling his public, “It’s none of your business. I don’t ask you where you send your kids to school, don’t bother me about where I send mine.” Probably best not to ask him about charm school.
Former Bush speechwriter Pete Wehner, whose monitory posts at Commentary’s “Contentions” blog frequently stress the need for civility in public discourse, evidently missed these and other Christie gems. But Pete certainly caught this week’s diatribe against the “sharia crazies,” and it’s got him just as goose-bumpy as the Washington Post’s left-wing blogger Greg Sargent.
According to Pete, “unfair animus toward Muslim Americans” is among the “troubling tendencies” in today’s conservatism, particularly among the tea-party types who are the bête noir of establishment GOP commissars of compassion. That’s why Pete is “grateful,” he continued, that Christie “spoke out in defense of his appointment of Sohail Mohammed to a state bench.”
Full →
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