Chris Christie Scores A Goal

There are many of us conservatives who have problems with Chris Christie’s politics. Anthropogenic climate change and the appointment of a sharia-compliant judge, for starters. But even his critics have to admit that when Christie gets it right, he’s a hoot. George Bush got plenty of press when he announced that “I wish they weren’t called ‘the Bush tax cuts.”

Christie’s remarks got far less press. Bush introduced Chris Christie at the Bush Institute Conference on Taxes and Economic Growth, in New York City. He prefaced Christie’s remarks with a humorous jab: “I compliment the governor’s enormous personality.” But he also took a more serious tack by complimenting Christie on his belief in the individual.

After Bush’s sunny speech and pleasant introduction, Christie took the microphone and announced “I haven’t seen a less optimistic period in the country in my lifetime.” He did clarify that there were plenty of enthusiastic conservatives who were optimistic about a Republican victory in November, but that fact doesn’t change the basic downer that the Obama administration has been.

Indicating his belief that a continuation of Obamacrat leftist class warfare would be disastrous for America, Christie said: “Government’s telling people to stop dreaming, stop striving, we’ll take care of you. We’re turning into a paternalistic entitlement society. That will not just bankrupt us financially, it will bankrupt us morally.”

Then came the money quote that won’t make headlines in the mainstream: “We’ll have a bunch of people sitting on a couch waiting for their next government check.” After that, he provided examples of the alternative which the Republican Party is likely to embrace after the nomination is settled once and for all. He used his own state and his own programs as an example. He vetoed the legislature’s “millionaire’s tax” (a carbon copy of the Buffett Rule that Obama is promoting twenty times each day). He also cited his own plan for instituting an income tax reduction of 10% across the boards, as well as his pro-growth policies without big government handouts.

Christie also talked about a concept that doesn’t please true believers on the right (or the left)—compromise. Compromise, standing by itself, is neither good nor bad. It’s what is done with the compromise that makes the difference. Though some of us may think Christie has compromised too much on certain specific issues (see first paragraph, above), his discussion of true believers is right on the money. We’ve discussed that issue multiple times on this site.

Said Christie of his own relations with the opponents in the legislature: “We developed relationships with the other side of the aisle that allowed them to trust us. And that doesn’t happen overnight. Day after day after day you have to sit with our colleagues and convince them of the goodness of your spirit and of the understanding that compromise is not a dirty word.” While Democrats in the national legislature (Congress) blame budget paralysis on the Republicans, the truth is that the Democrats have been utterly intransigent, refusing to listen to even the most lukewarm of Republican proposals. As long as they have their socialist President, they feel they have cover for their failure to accomplish much of anything except the doomed Obamacare.

Regardless of what we may think was a “good” compromise or a “bad” compromise, his words were right on the money. “The subject of compromise has itself become a controversial concept. As ideological purity has come to be valued above all, we’ve forgotten that we’re not just responsible for our moral claims, but also for the consequences of our actions and inaction. He then went on to personalize the issue by quoting Michael Novak: “I learned that I must never again seek moral purity at the expense of responsibility for the results.”

That would be consistent with Ronald Reagan’s acceptance of 80% conservative Republicans. But even more aptly, it fits into the ancient adage that “the perfect is the enemy of the good.” Meanwhile, we can hope that the couch potatoes waiting for their government checks will be too lazy to get off the couch to go to the polls. Otherwise, conservatives have already lost the 49% of Americans who pay no income taxes while complaining that their government checks are too puny.