'A Talking Republican!'

In his latest column, Thomas Sowell writes:

The first time I saw New Jersey governor Chris Christie on television, a few years ago, my first reaction was astonishment: “A talking Republican!”

It would scarcely have been more astonishing if there had been a talking giraffe. For reasons unknown, most Republican leaders seem to pay very little attention to articulation — certainly as compared with leading Democrats, who seem to pay little attention to anything else.

Governor Christie’s nearly two-hour-long press conference last week showed again that he is in a class by himself when it comes to Republicans who can express themselves in the heat of political battle.

When it comes to policies, I might prefer some other Republican as a 2016 presidential candidate. But the bottom line in politics is that you have to get elected in order to have the power to accomplish anything. It doesn’t matter how good your ideas are if you can’t be bothered to articulate them in a way that the voting public can understand.

Chris Christie’s press conference showed that, unlike Barack Obama, Christie did not duck the media or sidestep questions. Nor did he resort to euphemisms or cry out, like Hillary Clinton, “What difference, at this point, does it make?”

He met the questions head-on and gave unequivocal answers — the kind of answers that could, and should, destroy his political future if they are not true.

More important, Governor Christie quickly fired the people he held responsible for deliberately creating a traffic jam on the George Washington Bridge. Contrast that with the many scandals in Washington for which President Obama has not fired anyone.

Perhaps Christie’s ability to seize the moment, and use what I called yesterday “Jersey Jujitsu”  against the feral pack journalism of the MSM, may be why Tom Brokaw is warning his younger, sillier fellow leftists at MSNBC, “You’ve got to move on, guys:”

Appearing on Wednesday’s MSNBC Daily Rundown, NBC special correspondent Tom Brokaw warned his media colleagues about their excessive coverage of the Chris Christie bridge controversy: “I do think, across the country, however, when they’re looking at long-term unemployment, and they’re looking at the uncertainty of the ObamaCare, they’re saying, ‘You’ve got to move on, guys.'” [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]

Brokaw continued: “You can only close those lanes for so long if you’re in the national media. I do wonder if this had happened in Nevada, whether it would have gotten much attention.”

Or heck, you know, the District of Columbia.

(Via Maggie’s Farm.)