Republicans nationally remain enthralled by Gov. Chris Christie, the gregarious, pugnacious, budget-balancing, union-fighting fiscal conservative. Whether they’re ready for the Christie who opposes rolling back gun-control laws, believes it’s wrong to demagogue about immigration or Muslims, and endorses President Barack Obama’s education plans might prove another matter.
“The idea of Chris Christie is much more powerful than the reality of Chris Christie,” said Rutgers University political scientist Ross Baker.
Odds are, they’re not going to have to pass judgment soon. Christie says he’s not running for president in 2012, though his answers leave people who hope he might change his mind enough reason to keep the fires stoked.
For as long as he’s not actually a candidate, positions he’s taken that play better in Denville than Des Moines remain mostly unknown.
But as Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who has quickly gone from a conservative darling to a candidate struggling to defend tuition breaks for illegal immigrants and mandating cervical-cancer vaccines for sixth-grade girls, Tea Partiers can be a forceful, feisty bunch who refuse to compromise.
“Some candidates, when they announce, that’s their high point,” said Frank Newport, editor of the Gallup Poll.
Daniel Schnur, director of the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at the University of Southern California, pointed to an analogy often cited by Richard Galen, a Republican strategist who went to high school in West Orange, who likens a prospective candidate to a football team’s backup quarterback, always popular when he hasn’t yet played.
“If he decided to run, Christie could be a very formidable contender for the nomination. But the candidate is always greener on the other side of the fence, so Republican voters who now look at him from some distance only see an idealized version of Chris Christie,” said Schnur, who was communications director for John McCain’s presidential campaign in 2000.
“If he does get into the race, those same voters will see a much more balanced image of him. That doesn’t mean he can’t win the nomination or the election,” Schnur said. “It just means that he’s never going to be as appealing to voters again as he is today.”
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