New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie must be thinking “Who cares what Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin and conservative bloggers say. The people of New Jersey like me. They REALLY like me!” The reason: polls show Christie has gotten a boost in the polls from his stewardship of New Jersey during Hurricane Sandy. That included working with and praising President Barack Obama — two things many Republicans feel are signs of treason (you don’t cooperate with the “enemy” and you never praise him, particularly during an election year and particularly if you’re supposed to be a Mitt Romney surrogate):
Some Republicans still want answers from New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) for his embrace of President Obama just days before the election and in the wake of Superstorm Sandy. But the tough-talking governor has won plenty of other allies for his handling of the storm’s aftermath.
A Rutgers-Eagleton poll on Wednesday showed that 67 percent of New Jersey voters have a favorable opinion of Christie. That’s a 19-point jump since the previous Rutgers-Eagleton poll in September. The poll also found his constituents overwhelmingly approve of Christie’s post-storm stewardship, while 81 percent believe he and Obama displayed “needed cooperation and bipartisanship” in the wake of the disaster.
Two other recent polls show Christie drawing a political boost. A survey on Tuesday from a right-leaning pollster, conducted on behalf of the New Jersey Republican State Committee, showed Christie with an eye-popping approval rating of 77 percent among New Jersey voters. Meanwhile, a Quinnipiac University poll on Tuesday revealed that Christie had won widespread admiration from individuals outside his state, with New York City voters giving him higher marks for his response to Sandy than the city’s Mayor Michael Bloomberg, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) and Obama.
This is not to say that Christie has not tried to smooth the Republican noses that are out of joint:
A report in the New York Times on Monday indicated that Christie has been forced to assuage disgruntled Republicans for his embrace of Obama the week before Election Day. It reflects a popular sentiment among many conservatives, who insist that the combination of the storm and the optics of Obama and Christie working in tandem effectively undermined Mitt Romney’s chances. But the polls show Christie’s post-Sandy response also enhanced his own profile. Over the weekend, he made a cameo on Saturday Night Live.
Read this account of how Republicans are blaming Christie for their hapless candidate’s loss — even saying that to Christie’s face.
The silliness of this scape-goat seeking charge by conservatives is profound. Any analysis of the poll results, the Obama ground game, and writings by serious analysts (forget Dick Morris) such as Larry Sabato, John Avlon, and Samuel Popkin can give a long laundry list of reasons why Romney zoomed down to defeat. And Romney’s post election comments displayed a)a misunderstanding of why he lost b)a confirmation of his 47% comments which clearly played a role in perceptions many voters had of him.
Additionally, many of the GOPers who are furious at Christie for supposedly helping Romney lose were bowing at the feet of Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity in the kinds of rhetoric they had their party use in a campaign — rhetoric that polls show turned of moderates, women, young people, Latinos, gays and seniors in droves. Romney may have lost the Presidential vote on election day, but during the final weeks of the campaign he won the vote of many conservative pundits radio and right wing cable talk show hosts.
It has to be said here: the whole chronology of a clearly concerned Christie meeting with and working with Obama, praising him, then getting lambasted by conservatives and accused of being a traitor, then (reportedly falsely) accused of at the last minute refusing to appear at a Sunday-before-election Romney rally (Christie blasted Romney staffers who blind sourced the allegation) have propelled Christie into not just a larger than life figure but a political figure independents, moderates and Democrats will at least listen to. The concept is simple: if someone is like a John McCain and predictably issuing partisan bile they perceived as predictable partisans by many non-members of a partisan choir and the news media. If someone appears to be more independent, their ideas and criticisms get a better listen from many voters and the news media.
It’s a fact. Just as it’s a fact that in politics when someone is a “knee-jerk partisan,” to many voters the emphasis is on the second word.
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.