On March 9 the New York Times published an article titled "Christie's Talk Is Blunt but Not Always Straight" where it took Governor Christie to task for various claimed inaccuracies in his statements.  In my opinion, much of this article was devoted to fairly minor drifts from hard facts into unsubstantiated claims and forth.  Of particular note to me was the wording of this article, and the wording of those interviewed for the article making claims about Christie's intentions when playing "fast and loose" with the facts. 

The article quotes a local college professor:  “Clearly there has been a pattern of the governor playing fast and loose with the details,” said Brigid Harrison, a political science professor at Montclair State University. “But so far, he’s been adept at getting the public to believe what he says.”    Here the good professor implies that Christie conspires to deliberately mislead the NJ public, without offering a shred of evidence other than to point out some claimed inaccuracies in what Christie has said.  And of course, the Times lets the claim skate by unchallenged.  There is also no concrete comparison of those statements Christie has made that contain inaccuracies vs those that are spot on.  There's a pattern buried in there somewhere. 

In another quote by the now infamous Bret Schundler, the former education head for the Christie administration whose very public blunder cost the state $400 million in borrowed Chinese aid for schools stated:  “His entire point was he likes to be on offense rather than defense,” Mr. Schundler said days later. “He wanted to make this all about the Obama administration’s picayune rules rather than our error.” Schundler also claims he warned the Governor in advance that blaming the Obama Administration for the gaff would be false.  The truth here is we will never know the truth.  In one corner we have a pugnacious Governor who swings first and asks questions later.  In the other a disgraced official, humiliated on the national stage, trying to grasp at least some redemption.

All in all, the article complains about mostly minor goofs and gaffs, and fails to score Christie at the same level of spectacular sophistry as President Obama, whose talk is almost never blunt, and is as straight as Lombard Street in San Francisco.  To choose between the two politicians is like choosing between ice cream and over-cooked creamed spinach (blech).

Having said all this, there is one area that I have noticed where I think Christie is being out and out dishonest, and I feel obligated to take Christie to task for it.  Unfortunately for the Times, it's a liberal taboo subject:  Gun control.

Robert Verbruggin published a small article in the National Review Online in late February in which he quoted Christie on his lack of interest in introducing legislation to correct some of the myriad of traps and inequities in NJ's oppressive gun control regulations.  To the question of whether or not correcting one of those imbalances was on the legislative table, Christie replied: "No. Not at all. In fact, I think that Democrats — if they had a Democratic governor, there would be even more of these put on the books. They tried to in [former governor Jon] Corzine’s last year [in office], and they got caught up in the legislature trying to do even more.”

In a blog piece on the Pajamas media website, author Bob Owens lays out Christie's anti-gun position, little noted elsewhere in the local press.

At a relatively recent "town hall" gathering, Christie responded to a question about gun control reform this way: "I'm not going to bang my head against the wall on issues that there are absolutely no chance will get posted for a vote in the Legislature"  Interesting that the Governor is willing to butt heads with the legislature over and over on other issues, but not on gun control.  Not worth it, he says.

The Governor from the state of New Jersey prides himself on being a 'straight shooter' (pun intended), however, he is clearly no great champion of the Second Amendment, and conveniently hides behind famously anti-gun NJ liberals in making excuses for not being willing to take on the outrageously unfair gun regulations in this state.  Even while he side-steps questions on gun control, the press little notes that his administration is vigorously defending these liberal enacted laws in two key court challenges.  One active lawsuit challenges the legality of the one-handgun-a-month law enacted late the Corzine administration's term.  The challenge is on technical grounds, but the legal foundation for the technical issue making the gun-a-month law illegal itself is quite compelling.  The other legal challenge is to New Jersey's hyper restrictive 'never issue' conceal carry regulations.  These laws defacto make it impossible for an ordinary citizen in good standing to obtain a permit.  The conceal carry laws are being challenged on Constitutional grounds that New Jersey effectively bans the right to bear arms, which the Supreme Court affirmed as a right under the Constitution in the now famous Heller case.

So, while the Times nitpicks on some goofs and gaffs the Governor has made on the fiscal related issues of the State, it ignores the single most significant example of Gubernatorial hypocrisy when Christie claims on the one hand of being a no b.s. politician, while intentionally avoiding coming out and saying f-you to New Jersey gun owners.  He's saying it in court, and he's hiding behind liberals to conceal his anti-gun stance from the conservatives who so love his willingness to slug it out with liberals on other social and fiscal issues.

Let me be clear:  Christie is doing a far better job (not perfect, not flawless, but far better) at wrangling in a giant fiscal mess created by a succession of his predecessors, but let's not get caught up in the moment.  This Governor is not a conservative's conservative, and there are plenty of talking-head conservatives ignoring this particular flaw in the political composition of conservative 'Rock Star' Chris Christie.  Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh take note.