Blue State Governor Chris Christie must be following a Southern Strategy
by digby
He's writing off the Blue States and even some of the swing states with this:
“If you’re getting high in Colorado today, enjoy it,” Christie, a Republican campaigning for the 2016 presidential nomination, said Tuesday during a town-hall meeting at the Salt Hill Pub in Newport, New Hampshire. “As of January 2017, I will enforce the federal laws.”
At a time when a majority of Americans say recreational pot use should be legal, and four states have already made it so, Christie remains opposed. The former federal prosecutor said Democratic President Barack Obama has selectively chosen which laws to enforce.
Christie is trying to pump up his candidacy ahead of the first Republican debate on Aug. 6 by talking to voters in New Hampshire, the state with the first primary. Fox News, the debate sponsor, plans to winnow the party’s field of 16 candidates down to 10 using an average of five national polls. The RealClearPolitics polling average currently has Christie in ninth place.
The governor said he believes marijuana alters the brain and serves as a so-called gateway to the use of harder drugs. Pointing to his own administration of New Jersey’s medical marijuana program that he opposes, he said elected officials can’t unilaterally choose which statutes to enforce.
“That’s lawlessness,” he said. “If you want to change the marijuana laws, go ahead and change the national marijuana laws.”
But he's also a big states' rights believer:
As he responded to the question on gun rights, Christie said that "all our rights are given to us by God," not by the government.
It was the second time during the 90-minute meeting that Christie spoke of rights coming from God. He also articulated his support for states' rights: "It was the states that created the federal government, not the federal government that created the states. We need to get back to that philosophy."
If that gives you a headache only a huge hit of indica could cure, it should. He believes in states' rights except for guns, the unfettered rights for which are federally guaranteed, and marijuana which is federally illegal. And probably some other stuff too. Depending on what he wants.
This is not unusual among so-called "states' rights" believers. Liberals use the separate laws in states to advance their agenda too, as they have with pot, but with a few exceptions they tend to simply say that if states agree with them they'll certainly take it but they believe that since we are one country the laws should apply equally everywhere. They simultaneously work to pass national gun safety and marijuana legalization laws. Conservatives believe in states' rights as a principle --- unless the states are doing something they don't like.
Christie is desperate. He was supposed to be the prime asshole who told voters to "sit down and shut up" and Trump has out-assholed him. Now he's saying Trump is unseemly. Poor guy.
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