Get ready for those Kabuki dance references that will surface next year when recently re-elected New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie comes calling on the Sunshine State. That the Time magazine cover subject will be heading our way is a given.
Christie is the incoming chairman of the Republican Governors Association. Officially, he’ll be traveling the country in 2014 on behalf of the 22 GOP governors up for re-election. Unofficially, he’ll be reconnoitering the 2016 presidential-campaign terrain and stockpiling political IOUs.
As it turns out, three incumbents that warrant visits from the RGA chairman are the governors of Iowa, South Carolina and Florida. Christie, of course, is a Republican whose trump card is bipartisan appeal and non-Tea Party electability. So it will bear watching how he handles the Rick Scott dynamic. Can you say optics from hell? In retrospect, Scott and King Juan Carlos will have never looked so simpatico.
Will there be schedule “conflicts” (now being scheduled as we speak)? Or will Christie take one for Big Tent Team GOP, play down the polarizing, unpopular governor’s anti-Obama shtick and perfume the incumbent pig with arm’s length, non-tactile, disingenuous praise?