Can't Get Enough 'o His 'tude

You know what Chris Christie is?  He is what conservatives spent eight increasingly maddening years wishing George W. Bush could have been:

Dubya's biggest fault was that he would never - and I mean NEVER - abandon the "New Tone" turn-the-other-cheek-ism he brought with him from Texas to D.C.  He never - and I mean NEVER - sold or defended his policies, or himself.  He'd just throw proposals out there and leave them to be shot to pieces by the Democrats, while he was being personally beaten to a PR pulp on a daily basis.  It's a lot of why he barely eked out re-election in 2004 against a horrendous stiff like John Kerry and his approval numbers scraped along the bottom for almost the entirety of his second term, and also why the Republican "brand" was so devastated by the time he rode off into the Crawford sunset, leaving dozens of Pachyderm corpses in his wake.

And THAT, I think, is why Chris Christie is such a right-wing rock star, even though he's less than "pure" away from fiscal issues (the GZM and Mike Castle endorsements).  Because it wasn't just Bush43 who seemed to lack self-respect, but the bulk of the GOP.  Now here comes a guy who doesn't just engage, doesn't just give better than he gets, but relishes the challenge.  He's an insatiable one-man-gang of teachable moments who understands that no matter how good an idea or a policy may be, it cannot sell itself.

He also understands the one thing that Ronald Reagan never figured out, and the corallary to the immediately aforementioned principle: It DOES matter who gets the credit for the success of a policy if you want that policy to endure.

There's one thing about which the Left is spot-on right: The ideological war never ends.  And right now Chris Christie is utterly dominating that battlefield (at least until the tighty-righties can primary his fat, RINO ass to hell in three years).

Imagine the whole GOP emulating his example.

If you want to know a "big" reason why Democrats are "panicking," there you go.