It seems that the corporate media's swoonfest over Bluster Boy isn't necessarily shared by the people he needs to..uh...elect him.
If New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie runs for president in 2016, he would likely face the dual challenges of uniting a fractured Republican Party and besting a formidable Hillary Clinton in a general election, according to a new NBC News poll.
Gotta love this quote:
“We’re so frustrated with all this Christie talk we can’t see straight,” Scott Hofstra, a Tea Party Republican from Kentucky told the Times. “He’s no more conservative than Harry Reid,” referring to the Democratic Senate majority leader.
Ouch!
The poll shows a stark geographic divide among the latte-sipping, hedge fund owning, country-club Republican set in the Northeast and the real 'Murkan folks in the Heartland. Solid pluralities in the red states of the South, Midwest and West prefer another candidate to Christie. Seems the grassroots prefers a candidate who doesn't try to tallk out of both sides of his mouth. They had enough of that with Mitt Romney.
Appearing on Sunday’s “Meet the Press,” Christie declined to label himself a moderate or conservative. “I don't get into these labels. That's the Washington, D.C., game,” he said
That's not the way to win hearts and minds in the Tea Party. They do "get into these labels." If a candidate can't even bring himself to say he's a
conservative, he's going to have a rough time against a field of cuckoo-birds crowing about their right-wing propers.
Meanwhile Clinton leads him in every region, drawing high approval marks from the same demographics that propelled President Obama to two terms:
Christie's challenges extend beyond his own party: The poll finds Clinton getting the support of 44 percent of all adults in a hypothetical match up against the New Jersey governor, who gets 34 percent. The rest of respondents either preferred another candidate, said they would not vote, or were undecided.
And while Election Day 2016 is still more than 1,000 days away, the survey shows Clinton benefiting from the same demographic trends that helped propel President Barack Obama to win the election in 2008 and re-election in 2012.
Clinton leads Christie among African Americans (83 percent to 4 percent), respondents ages 18 to 29 (45 percent to 31 percent) and Latinos (44 percent to 33 percent).
Coming right on the heels of Christie's stunning landslide in an essentially unopposed race, and including a day of polling after Christie's love-in on the Sunday news shows, this NBC poll has to throw some cold seawater on the media-inspired Christie frenzy. It appears that Hurricane Sandy made landfall just a little too far North for the Republican Party.