Required Reading

Kurt Schlichter has a thing or two to say to Chris Christie:

We don’t like you and we don’t trust you.

Now, that’s not a deal breaker. You feel the same way about us. There is nothing that says we conservatives can’t grow to like and/or trust you. Maybe we just got off on the wrong foot. So, in that spirit, let’s share our feelings.

We feel you’re in it for yourself and that if you get elected your administration will be a festival of squishiness that would make George W. Bush look like Ted Cruz.

Getting up to talk about Mitt Romney and talking about yourself? Classless. Getting in a micturition contest with conservative warrior Rand Paul? Lame. And don’t delude yourself that we are mad because you hugged the President on the eve of the election. Our beef was your evident glee, as if you were publicly repudiating our imagined “irrational hatred.” We had beefs with Mitt Romney, but we respected him as a decent man and we saw your act as a cheap backstab designed to promote yourself when he needed you most.

Hey, you’re from Jersey. You can handle this real talk, right?

Read the whole thing, of course — it’ll likely make your morning.

But I wonder about that last line quoted above. Can Christie handle real talk? He’s great at a press conference, dueling with skeptical, even hostile, reporters. My friend and colleague Scott Ott, having met Christie, came away thinking that Christie really makes you believe he believes in what he’s saying. But Scott didn’t come away really knowing just what Christie really believes. That last part probably isn’t a shocker to anyone who’s been paying attention to New Jersey politics in all its craptaculent glory.

What we do know is this. When confronted by the national media or approached by the holder of national office, Christie stops being so delightfully combative and goes into full Love Me mode. In that one sense, he reminds me a bit of John McCain. So if the GOP is looking for the tough-on-the-stump Christie we see playing the game in New Jersey, I’m not sure that’s the Christie they’d see at the top of the national ticket.