Tom Moran:
Most Americans don't know Chris Christie like I do, so it's only natural to wonder what testimony I might offer after covering his every move for the last 14 years.
Is it his raw political talent? No, they can see that.
Is it his measurable failure to fix the economy, solve the budget crisis or even repair the crumbling bridges? No, his opponents will cover that if he ever gets traction.
My testimony amounts to a warning: Don't believe a word the man says.
If you have the stomach for it, this column offers some greatest hits in Christie's catalog of lies.
Don't misunderstand me. They all lie, and I get that. But Christie does it with such audacity, and such frequency, that he stands out.
NY Times:
On his new website, Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey portrays himself as a guy who gets attacked for “telling it like it is,” but that’s what his mom told him to do from her deathbed.
It is part of the legend Mr. Christie has carefully cultivated for many years, with startling success. He is described as “brash” and “bold,” with a certain rough charisma that his political opponents just cannot handle. “I get accused a lot of times of being too blunt and too direct and saying what’s on my mind just a little bit too loudly,” he says in the first video for his presidential campaign, showing him with a selected group of adoring voters.
It’s fundamentally nonsense. There are lines between brash and belligerent, between open and obnoxious, and, most important, between “telling it like it is” and not telling the truth. Mr. Christie crosses those lines all the time, as Tom Moran, the editorial page editor of The Star-Ledger of Newark, documented in a blistering column about Mr. Christie’s “catalog of lies.”
“Don’t misunderstand me. They all lie, and I get that,” Mr. Moran wrote of politicians in general. “But Christie does it with such audacity, and such frequency, that he stands out.”
Donald Trump is already occupying the bombast/liar demographic. What's Christie got left?
More politics and policy below the fold.
CNN:
Most Americans say they support each of the two major Supreme Court rulings issued late last week, and nearly four in 10 now say they view the Court as too liberal.
According to a new CNN/ORC poll, 63% support the Court's ruling upholding government assistance for lower-income Americans buying health insurance through both state-operated and federally-run health insurance exchanges. Slightly fewer, 59%, say they back the ruling which made same-sex marriages legal in all 50 states.
Support for each ruling is sharply divided by party, with most Democrats and independents behind both, and most Republicans opposed to both.
Charlie Cook:
The momentous events of the last week can be interpreted in numerous ways. But one thing has become increasingly clear: The Republican Party needs to change.
One of the key organizing principles—an obsession, even—of Republicans in recent years has been their vehement opposition to the Affordable Care Act. This has been the centerpiece of Republican rhetoric and a focus of the party's legislative agenda, with the House of Representatives having voted something like 60 times to repeal or defund all or parts of the law. Obamacare will long be in the GOP stable of examples of what they say are President Obama's and congressional Democrats' extreme policies, but with the Supreme Court's King v. Burwell decision, their focus will need to shift to something else now.
Though Obamacare has been a divisive subject, it is the controversy over the Confederate battle flag and the Obergefell v. Hodges Supreme Court decision on gay marriage that bring to sharp focus the cultural and generational disconnect between the Republican Party's conservative base and the direction of the country as a whole.
Upshot:
The legalization of same-sex marriage is a potent example of a dominant theme in American history: Over time, civil rights expand, and discrimination ebbs.
Discrimination doesn’t end, as a recent mass shooting and some police interactions with the public have made clear. There have even been long periods, like the aftermath of Reconstruction, when rights have contracted. But the exceptions don’t disprove the rule. On basic issues — who can vote, who can work, who can serve in elected office, who can marry — the country tends to move in one broad direction.
As a result, it’s fair to divide the major issues in American political life into two broad categories. In one category are the rights-based issues in which the future can be safely predicted. In the other category — which includes abortion, gun control and climate change — there is far less clarity about the direction of public opinion.
David Russell:
Like all mood changes that take place in a mass society, it takes a great deal of groundswell for there to be any uprising that forces government to change. The cycle we are in has been 40 years in the making. The Republican Party has been masterful in using culture war wedge issues as a means of attracting and distracting voters, while they used their time in office to repeatedly pass legislation that favored business over workers and downshifted costs to individuals, which accelerated the erosion of stagnant wages. They have smugly gone about the business of enriching themselves and their sponsors, comfortable in the knowledge that Americans are largely uninformed and do not pay attention to the details of the legislative process.
This time around, however, the evolution of the Republicans will come too late for them to maintain the control they have had over their base. As the party is forced to shift away from cultural issues, it will become increasingly clear that the Republican stance on economics has not benefitted small business, as they claim; it has not benefited American families, as they claim; it has not benefitted students; and it has not benefitted workers. However, the Republican stance has uniformly and consistently disadvantaged the working American under the guise of "unwarranted government welfare," "freedom to chose," and "liberty from government interference."
As that reality is broadcast by an increasingly progressive Democratic Party, combined with a president who only recently realized that he could display his liberal side, economic issues will continue to erode the Republican Party's control over the public it seeks to attract.
Peter Manseau:
During those 13 seconds, Obama looks out over the crowd, then down at his notes, then he shakes his head slightly. Watch behind him; the assembled clergy seem momentarily unsure what will happen next. They sit still, watching him. The only movement comes from Bishop Julius H. McAllister, seated just to the left, who closes his eyes and sways as if he can already hear the music. Throughout the eulogy, the president’s words had been met with call-and-response encouragements, but for every one of those thirteen seconds there is only silence.
Harry Enten:
A look at public opinion on same-sex marriage and what drives party affiliation suggests that Cruz, Walker and the other candidates on the right may be risking the party’s appeal in the general election. The Republican Party’s opposition to same-sex marriage is one of the top positions that may have kept voters from identifying with and potentially voting for the GOP.
HuffPost:
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio's reported frustrations with New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo came to a head Tuesday when the mayor ripped into the governor's "lack of leadership," accusing Cuomo of prioritizing deal-making and vengeance over doing what's best for the city.
In a remarkably candid interview with NY1, de Blasio laid out his concerns with fellow Democrat Cuomo and his dealings with New York City. De Blasio accused the governor of wielding influence over the Republican-led state Senate, which dealt the mayor's progressive agenda a series of defeats earlier this month.
"What I found was he engaged in his own sense of strategies, his own political machinations, and what we've often seen is if someone disagrees with him openly, some kind of revenge or vendetta follows," the mayor said. "I don't believe the Assembly had a real working partner in the governor or the Senate in terms of getting things done for the people of this city and in many cases the people of this state."