Conservatives have a fee-vah and the only prescription is more Chris Christie

And at a “Newsmaker Breakfast” sponsored by The American Spectator and Americans for Tax Reform last week, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich said, “Christie is actually trying to fundamentally change New Jersey…” In a world where politicians are rewarded for taking the easy road, the portly and rumpled governor of New Jersey has become a rare commodity – an elected official willing to make hard decisions, despite the fact that he knows it will cost him politically.
Christie has been in office only a few months, but his hard-line on cutting New Jersey’s unwieldy $10.7 billion budget deficit has already taken its toll on his polling numbers. In just a few months, his approval ratings have plummeted. Local officials and Democrats are angry that he wants to cut spending, and that he won’t let them raise taxes. At the same time, Christie may be doing exactly what is needed to save his state from further economic calamity. Perhaps this is what we should have expected from a man with the moxie to tell Governor Corzine, “man up and say I’m fat.”…

Despite the criticism, Christie has stayed the course, which for him means addressing New Jersey’s devastated state finances by dramatically cutting spending. Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, recalls that the last New Jersey Republican governor, Christine Todd Whitman, “started to fight with the unions and there was screaming and blood on the floor, and she kind of backed down.” In terms of how Christie is doing, Norquist quips, “Christie 2.0 is doing better than Christie 1.0.”