New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, the personification of the Republican Party as angry bully, will deliver the keynote address at the Republican National Convention next week. Christie's prominence at the RNC seems like an
unintentionally appropriate commentary on Mitt Romney's claims that his campaign's focus is all about jobs. Because, well:
The latest Labor Department report, released Friday, shows that New Jersey’s unemployment rate climbed to 9.8% in July, the fourth-highest in the country, and the highest in the state in 35 years.
The Garden State is also one of only two states, along with neighboring New York, to have hit a new high in unemployment in the past four years. Other have seen their unemployment rates drop, in some cases significantly, from the recent highs during the economic downturn that began in 2008.
Christie's contributions to his state's recovery (or lack thereof) from the recession include
halting school construction projects on which the state had already spent $200 million and that would have created jobs and made schools safer; giving
$1.57 billion in corporate tax breaks, with one $900 million corporate tax break program creating just 2,364 jobs; and killing construction of a
rail tunnel to New York that would have eased commutes, increased home values, and created tens of thousands of jobs.
If Mitt Romney really cared about jobs, all that might be something he wanted to keep a distance from. But the fact is that Christie's policies are exactly what Romney is promising—and the chance to burnish his angry bully credentials? For Romney, that's priceless.
(Via The Maddow Blog)