Is Republican New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie — the guy talk show hosts, and staunch Republican partisan conservatives increasingly hate — the most popular politician in America? A new poll finds that he indeed is:
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) may be the most popular politician in the land.
A new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll shows 41 percent of Americans view Christie positively, compared to just 12 percent who view him negatively. And he gets equally strong marks from across the political spectrum, with 43 percent of Democrats viewing him favorably.That 29-point split is the best among any politician studied, including longtime leader and former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, who is viewed positively by 49 percent and negatively by 31 percent.
(Her numbers, notably, have taken a hit in recent months; in December, she had a 58/28 split.)
As recently as August 2012, Christie was viewed favorably by 18 percent of Americans and unfavorably by the same number. Of course, that was before the Republican National Convention — where Christie delivered the GOP’s keynote address — and Hurricane Sandy, which brought Christie even more into the national spotlight.
Christie last week toured the newly rebuilt Jersey Shore with President Obama — a move that likely contributed to his latest bump in the polls, but could harm his chances of winning the GOP presidential nomination if he runs in 2016.
And, indeed, it is possible that Christie will eventually join that list of American politicians from both parties who were considered solid people, who were most of the time straight shooters and who gained respect among a wide variety of Americans not because he or she was on their political sports team but never could make it nationally due showing a semblance of a)independent thinking and b)being real rather than packaged or pandering and oozing phoniness.
Christie seems focused on one main thing now: New Jersey. Governing it and winning-re-election. The question is whether he will start making a Romney-like pivot if he wins re-election and decides to go for the White House.
And the bigger question is whether such a pivot — basically jettising many past positions (like Florida Sen. Marco Rubio is in the process of doing on immigration reform) would work. Romney showed that even someone vilified by talk show hosts could be embraced by them if he won and was the party’s candidate against Democrats.
And Romney showed that the pivot didn’t work out too well when he ran in a generaal election because he lost — the election plus much of his reputation due to his systematic pivot over the years and almost breathtakingly quick pivots during the 2012 election campaign.
Read my take on Christie HERE.
NBC News notes Republican anger at Christie for some of his recent independent actions and words and adds:
Some Republicans privately grumbled as recently as Tuesday, when Christie announced that he would hold a special election to fill the U.S. Senate seat vacated by the late Sen. Frank Lautenberg rather than appoint a Republican placeholder through the 2014 election. And beyond that, Christie didn’t necessarily commit to naming a Republican interim appointee to the seat until October’s election.
Those GOP grumbles are evident in the NBC/WSJ poll. Despite his crossover appeal, his support among Republican respondents isn’t as high as other prominent GOP politicians.
Take former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who also might be mulling a 2016 run — 48 percent of Republicans in the poll view him favorably, compared to just 7 percent who view him negatively.
Christie’s GOP support isn’t as strong, however: 40 percent positive vs. 16 percent negative.
And that’s perhaps the price of having crossover appeal.
Y-e-p.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.