The Star Ledger's Paul Mulshine, who says he's a conservative, has been dogging Christie for a property tax plan since February. He's been arguing that there is little difference between Christie and Corzine and that Christie has no intention of dealing with property taxes if elected. Mulshine twisted the interview in two posts on his NJ.com blog in a failed effort to make his case.
While preparing to write a post spelling out to Mulshine where his analysis is faulty, I realized he doesn't care. He just wants to weaken Christie's support amongst conservatives so that Corzine can get re-elected. The following exchange between Mulshine and one of his readers is why I say that:
newarkworker on 09/12/09 at 1:58PM
Hey PM What the heck are you talking about If I remember correctly every Governor since Byrne has promised to lower RE taxes. How did that work out? Whether you like it or not, Lonegan is NOT the candidate.Christie is and I'll take my chances with him. And besides there are other issues other than RE taxes.
PM: Exactly. Every other candidate at least promised. Chris is telling us in advance he won't do a damn thing.
As for Lonegan, he really would have kicked some butt. That's why he lost. A lot of that butt would have been in the GOP.
Mulshine would rather have a campaign slogan, ala 30 in 3 or 40 in 4 that will make no difference than what Christie is offering.
The problem for many in the media is that Christie is not running a sound bite campaign in a sound bite era. Christie does have a plan, but it takes more than a few minutes to digest it. If you read and think about the issues and the 88 ways to fix NJ that Chirstie lays out at his website, you'll see that Chris does indeed have a plan.
The problem for Mulshine is that Christie is not Steve Lonegan.
Mulshine and some other "conservative" writers are attempting to weaken Christie's support in his base in the hopes that Jon Corzine gets re-elected. They are under the delusion that if Corzine wins "real conservatives" will be able to take over the NJGOP and that the electorate will give them the keys to Trenton.
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7 comments:
Paul Mulshine is not a real conservative,
He is either a sham who wants to sell papers or a nut case
My view is that Chris Christie needs to make this race about educational funding. He just hasn't been aggressive enough in this regard.
My viewpoint is that it is impossible to defend the current educational funding formula that has poured money into inner cities for 20 years and done nothing to improve education. What is the justification for spending 15K per child in pre-K?
Jon Corzine has championed that waste. Remember the 100K+ Union City school bus drivers. Union City residents wouldn't put up with that if they were paying for it. But since the rest of NJ pays, the Union City residents don't care. And who supported giving Union City schools more money after the bus drivers contract was uncovered? Jon Corzine.
Boy, Art, you've really been drinking a lot of that Christie Kool-Aid.
Right Mike, and you'd have another 4 years of Corzine.
Art,
I must respectfully, disgaree with you, utterly and completely.
I have no way of disproving your assertion that Mulshine or even a majority of mainstream conservative secretly want Christie to lose..but it sounds a little black helicopterish.
More importantly is Christie's lack of message on property taxes or on fiscal matters in general. Simply put, if you have an 88 point plan, you have NO plan. The fact that Christie does not have a simple, easily understood message on this issue is not the media's problem, it Christie's problem.
Its clear by watching your interview with Christie that they have made a command decision to sit on their lead and specifically NOT to talk about property taxes. They're banking on the fact that people like me, who would really like to hear more from Christie about what he intends to do on a whole range of economic issues, will still vote for him. So far they're been right, but we'll see what happens over the next 7 weeks.
Art, please do your fans a favor. Tell your readers what you are paying in property taxes in 2009. Then come back here in four years (September of 2013) and tell us how much your property taxes were reduced during Christie's first four years in office. Can you do that for us?
My prediction: Your taxes will increase considerably under a Christie Administration. Moreover, you'll blame those tax increases on someone other than Chris Christie and that Democrat-lite party that he leads, the New Jersey Republican party.
Caramore,
At least we agree on one thing...Christie will be governor.
I pay approximately $25,000 in property taxes. If they increase considerably, I won't be paying them...someone else will and I'll be writing KeyWestMusings or StJohnMusings.
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