Is Chris "Mr. Corruption" Christie joining the ranks of the other tanking "Miracle Fascist" GOP governors?

Who is George Norcross III? No, he's not an elected official, and you man not have heard of him, but you've heard about some of the South Jersey Democratic boss's accomplishments, like helping get Republican Chris Christie elected governor and swinging a bloc of State Senate "Democrats" behind him.

by Ken

The phrase "buyer's remorse" has been cropping up a lot in Howie's coverage of the new crop of GOP "Miracle Fascist" governors (in Wisconsin, Florida, and Ohio among others). It looks like the poster boy for the club, New Jersey's Chris Christie, is joining the club. Bloomberg's Elise Young reports today on a recently conducted Bloomberg New Jersey poll:

Christie Loses Support for Second Term
By Elise Young - Jun 29, 2011 12:53 PM ET

More than half of New Jersey residents say they wouldn’t back Governor Chris Christie for a second term, disapproving of his choices on a range of policy and personal issues, from killing a commuter tunnel to using a state-police helicopter to attend his son’s baseball game.

Teachers, whose union Christie has targeted on tenure, pay and benefits, received a far higher favorable rating, 76 percent, than the first-term Republican. His favorable rating was 43 percent, according to a Bloomberg New Jersey poll conducted June 20-23. . . .

Fifty-eight percent of New Jersey residents disagreed with Christie’s decision not to extend a surcharge on the state’s highest-earning taxpayers, a measure that was revived for a vote this week by the Democratic-led Legislature. A majority, 51 percent, opposed his October cancellation of an $8.7 billion rail tunnel to New York, and 70 percent disagreed with his traveling via helicopter to his teenage son’s baseball game. . . .

The poll reports more than two-to-one (65 to31 percent) opposition to the Lardman's education cuts. In addition,

The survey showed 68 percent believe Christie stands with the business community compared with 22 percent who said he sides with “ordinary New Jerseyans.”

In the suburbs, where Christie proved more popular than Corzine in 2009, parents now disapprove of the Republican, 57 percent to 38 percent.
Mothers in those towns reported voting for Corzine over Christie, 34 percent to 32 percent. Now, 61 percent said they wouldn’t vote for the Republican. Fathers in those towns chose Christie over Corzine, 43 percent to 26 percent. Now, 51 percent said they wouldn’t vote for Christie.

Oh, there are still a lot of New Jerseyans buying the Superchris's pose as a champion of fiscal austerity (not helped, though, the poll shows, by the embarrassing revelations his would-be plutocrat's use of state helicopters for private purposes), but more and more Garden Staters are getting the message that what he's really about is making middle- and working-class families pay the bulk of the price for his bankster masters' greed and financial incompetence.


MEANWHILE, LIGHT IS SHED ON QUESTIONS
ABOUT THE STATE'S POLITICAL SKULDUGGERY

Did Democratic State Senate President Stephen Sweeney simply fold up like a cheap suitcase?

It was Sweeney who engineered the Senate Democratic split that brought the Lardman just enough votes to get his union-busting budget plan passed. Was he simply all atremble before the juggernaut that is National Hero Chris Christie?

Well, maybe not. In fact, Salon's Steve Kornacki says that's not at all what happened. In an earlier piece I'm just catching up with, "Chris Christie's Democratic helpers," tackling the question "Why would a Democratic legislature in a very blue state join the war on public unions?," he set out what in his latest piece, "The rise of the Chris Christie Democrats," he calls "the basics of what's going on here." And what's going on, he says, is some serious muscle-flexing by two increasingly powerful NJ Democratic political bosses, South Jersey's George Norcross and Newark's Steve Adubato Sr., which includes collaboration with Superchris going back to the gubernatorial race that Christie and Karl Rove illegally plotted while the Lardman was the stinking-corrupt U.S. attorney for the District of New Jersey.

Which incidentally casts a whole other light on what seemed a closed question:

What happened to Gov. Jon Corzine in his unsuccessful reelection bid?

"It's a widely held view by insiders from both parties in New Jersey," says Kornacki, "that Norcross and Adubato essentially left Governor Jon Corzine to wither on the vine in the '09 campaign, boosting Christie's prospects in the Democratic state."

In the new Salon piece Kornacki has a question of his own:

How did the Norcross and Adubato camps gain so much power within the Democratic Party?

Now this may sound like a parochial NJ issue of little concern for people outside the state. However, I think it's not only fascinating in its own right, but an important example of what we can expect from Democrats across the country. So I want to look in more detail tomorrow at what Kornacki describes as "an only-in-Jersey backroom deal that was struck at the height of the 2009 campaign."

I'm not so sure it's an "only-in-Jersey" kind of deal. I'm thinking, in fact, that it represents a kind of thinking common among nominal Democrats all over the country.

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