“Christie-ism”—an aggressively anti-worker conservatism that uses working-class affect and the promise of solidarity to push right-wing policies and mask a broader assault on the social safety net. It’s an approach that could take Christie to the White House. Indeed, this speech was a virtual audition for 2016 and Christie’s inevitable run for the presidency if Romney loses in November.
OK, Obama, you mealy-mouthed wimp: listen up. Romney will lose and you will have four more years to show your stuff. So let's see some guts for a change: show the white working class Republican "base," what a welfare state can deliver. Put together a WPA-style works project to get those dumb grunts out on the streets hacking and hewing. And it's not as if this is pointless make-work: the infrastructure is crumbling. Especially Harbor Drive, San Diego, which is pocked, potholed, and perfectly miserable for biking. And which has been under construction in a desultory fashion for about two years now. Get those guys out and digging!
And if a Republican-dominated congress says that we can't afford it, get up on your bully pulpit--on TV, radio and the Internet, and tell those guys that you're just asking the rich to pay their fair share to fix the roads so that they can drive around in their fat SUVs, and creating jobs for workers to fix and maintain them. You might even want to explain a little about public goods--those grunts aren't that dumb. They might actually understand.
Show these jerks what a welfare state can deliver, what it can do for them--not some mythical Welfare Queen.
You got four more years to deliver a European style socialist welfare state. Get going.
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