Don’t Be Fooled Democrats: Days Before The Election Chris Christie Bullies a Teacher

Days before his reelection Chris Christie blew the lid off of his moderate Republican facade by blowing up at a public school teacher, and showing the rage filled bully that he can’t hide.

Here is an account of the what went down from NJ.com, “Melissa Tomlinson, a teacher at Buena Regional Middle School, said she asked the governor, “Why are you portraying our schools as failure factories?” He responded, “What do you want? I’m tired of you people,” according to Tomlinson. They had a brief argument over public school funding before she said, “He told me to do my job and turned around and got on the bus.”

Tomlinson herself provided more specific details,

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I asked him: “Why do you portray our schools as failure factories?” His reply: “Because they are!” He said: “I am tired of you people. What do you want?”

I told him I want money for my students. He fought back with the amount that he has spent on education. My response was along the lines of the fact his amount was not actually an increase from the previous years, given the rate of inflation and other factors….

The crowd started arguing with me. He screamed at me to just do my job. The crowd cheered for him. I just looked at them and told them: “Hey, this is my life. I had to do this.” I tried to follow him to Atlantic City to continue the conversation, but the roads were blocked by police when I got there.

Chris Christie has been a bully with a horrid temper during his entire time in politics, so the fact that he would blow up on a teacher who wanted to discuss funding and more money for her students is not shocking in the least. Christie got a lot of goodwill for saying some nice things about President Obama after Hurricane Sandy last year, but the real Chris Christie is a disciple of the ALEC education agenda.

Gov. Christie has cut billions of dollars from New Jersey’s public schools. He also supports expanding the state’s voucher and charter school programs. In short, Christie is totally down with the ALEC plan to gut public education, kill the unions, and turn the education of children into a for profit private enterprise.

Establishment Republicans are lining up Christie to be their next great white hope for taking back the White House in 2016, but Christie is a ticking timebomb whose blowups will be filmed regularly in the cameras always on 24/7 world of the modern presidential campaign.

Then there is the problem of Christie’s vetting file. The Romney people couldn’t figure out how to use Gmail, but even they were able to come up with enough troubling red flags to keep Christie off of the ticket.

Gov. Christie is going to cruise to reelection with a big win on Tuesday, but Democrats shouldn’t be fooled. Chris Christie isn’t a new Republican. He subscribes to the same ALEC/Koch agenda as the rest.

New Jersey voters will vote for their candidates for their own reasons, but national Democrats should be fooled by Chris Christie’s act. Christie is more of the same old same old from the Republican Party, and if he can’t handle a question from a teacher, he will be eaten alive by Hillary Clinton and her team in 2016.

Jason Easley

Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.

Awards and  Professional Memberships

Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association