It was the great American philosopher Groucho Marx who sent the Friars Club this terse message by telegram: “Please accept my resignation. I don’t want to belong to any club that will accept people like me as a member.”
Last week, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie sent a variation of that message to the American Conservative Union (ACU), whose showcase event, the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), snubbed him as a speaker at this year’s conference. For those of you unfamiliar with this weird GOP contretemps, I’ll distill it in a nutshell:
CPAC is an annual conference attended by lots of GOP activists and politicians from across the country, at which they listen to speeches from the party’s golden boys and girls, and conduct a straw poll at the end to determine who they think will be the best candidate in the next presidential election.
Obviously, snagging a speaker’s invitation is considered a big deal, and over the years, all the party’s big guns — from Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush to representatives of the oddball contingent like Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann — have taken their turns in the spotlight. Among other party luminaries, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) former vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal and the always-entertaining Gov. Rick Perry of Texas will have speaking roles at the convention this month, but Christie won’t because he wasn’t invited. (In fact, although Christie spoke at a CPAC event in Chicago in 2012, he has never spoken at the Washington, D.C., event, and even turned down an invitation to the annual gathering in 2011.)
Still, because of his incredible popularity in his home state, the fact that he gave the keynote address at the last Republican National Convention, and the accepted wisdom that he’d be a formidable contender if he decides to throw his hat into the ring for the presidency in 2016, lots of deep thinkers in the party expected Christie to be on the podium this year, and were surprised when he wasn’t on the list.
The reasons for his exclusion? Although the official line is that it’s because he “didn’t have a stellar year,” the real reason is that the right wing of the party is miffed at Christie for being too “cozy” with Democrats and failing to toe the official line. They’re still mad that he praised President Barack Obama’s response to superstorm Sandy just days before the presidential election, that he blasted the Republicancontrolled Congress last January for dragging their feet on relief funds (“Sixty-six days and counting. Shame on you. Shame on Congress.”), for saying that House Speaker John Boehner’s inability to get the relief package passed was “why the American people hate Congress,” for calling the National Rifle Association’s attack on Obama after the Newtown, Conn., shootings “reprehensible,” and for some lesser infractions, like sitting next to Michelle Obama at the Governors Ball.
A popular governor who puts the interests of his state above blind adherence to the party’s agenda, and has shown that he does not hate the other side and will actually compromise clearly has no place sucking up the rarified air at CPAC. For his part, Christie handled the snub with aplomb. “I can’t sweat the small stuff,” he said. “I’ve got a state to run.” Not quite in Groucho’s league, but it got the point across.
The fact that the right wing of the GOP is on the outs with Christie certainly won’t hurt him in New Jersey, and might even help. It might even boost his approval ratings around here from the puny 74 percent he’s limping along with now even higher — to the point that the only candidate the Democrats could find to run against him in the 2013 gubernatorial election would be the Aflac Duck, who isn’t technically a human being, but at least has good insurance coverage if he gets a severe stompin’.
I don’t think the snub will ultimately hurt him on the national stage, either. I know he just went up several notches in my estimation. Your thoughts?
Sign in front of an area dry-cleaning business: Taylor On Premises. I always wonder whether that’s Zachary Taylor or Tim the Tool Man. It cracks me up every time.
One of the effects of this sequester business is that it will cut defense spending, but it looks like one of the Department of Defense’s stranger programs will go on as planned. According to a story carried by CNN last week, the DoD will soon carry out its $1 million program — in cooperation with the U.S. Department of Agriculture — to drop 2,000 dead mice packed with acetaminophen (the generic equivalent of Tylenol) on 100 acres of Andersen Air Force Base in Guam in an effort to kill the brown tree snakes that have taken over the area and are killing all the birds, small mammals and lizards. The snakes — which can grow up to 8 feet long — were accidentally introduced to the island after World War II, and apparently die within 72 hours after ingesting large doses of the drug. The drug-laced mice will be taped to pieces of cardboard, which will be attached to streamers with little parachutes, which will be dropped from helicopters to the jungle below, where the snakes will hopefully find them, munch down and croak.
The DoD and the USDA are hopeful that the pilot test at Andersen will be so successful that it can be used on the estimated 2 million snakes on the entire island of Guam. “This is being done in a very rigorous, scientific manner,” said Dan Vice, USDA assistant operations director on Guam. “This isn’t just something that we’ve just kind of come up with by the seat of our pants.”
I am not making this up. That’s really what he said.
Lots of reader response to last week’s column on the failure of the National Do Not Call Registry. It’s still coming in, but I’ll share some of what you had to say a little further down the road.
Gregory Bean is the former executive editor of Greater Media Newspapers. You can reach him at [email protected].