screen cap via Reuters footage
From Michigan to New Jersey, Republican governors are facing backlash from the implementation of the Republican ideology.
In New Jersey, Gov. Chris Christie is having a micro-Katrina moment as he abandoned his state to campaign, leaving it battling the aftermath of the blizzard storm’s surge – massive flooding, leading the state’s Star-Ledger to conclude in a scathing op-ed, “Perhaps it’s the stress of the presidential campaign, but the governor seems to be losing his mind. He acts as if reality doesn’t matter any more.”
Yikes.
What gives? Well, the Governor was on MSNBC’s Morning Joe this morning, and while usually no good ever comes of that, senior Huffington Post politics editor Sam Stein had the temerity to ask Christie why he was in New Hampshire campaigning when things were so awful for his constituents.
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“There is no residual damage, there is no flooding damage,” Christie “snarled” per the Star-Ledger op-ed. “All of the flooding receded yesterday morning. And there was no other damage. People were driving around the streets yesterday morning of New Jersey. So this is just what they wish would have happened.”
Oh. Well, don’t look now but the good folks at the Star-Ledger linked to reality.
“We managed the storm extraordinarily well,” Christie continued on TV, painting a pretty picture for America. “New Jersey Transit was back at noon yesterday after the storm, our roads were all open by 7 AM yesterday. And so, I think that’s what just folks who want to criticize me for anything that I do. I have not heard any of that criticism, I have not seen any of that criticism, and I think you’re just making it up.”
Not so much, unless “four and five feet of water in downtown”, “historic flooding”, “significant flooding” and the scary words “a big breach” are totes made up.
From Star-Ledger Op-Ed entitled “Earth to Christie: These pictures don’t lie, so why must you?”:
As the governor spoke, the mayor of North Wildwood, Patrick Rosenello, was rushing around town Monday morning trying to clean up the mess that doesn’t exist.
“We had between four and five feet of water in the downtown,” he says. “Our entire dune system was compromised, and we had a big breach on 3rd Avenue. We had whitecaps and ice flows right through town. It was surreal.
Cape May County after the storm, Sunday, Jan. 24, 2016 Sections of the Wildwoods remain under water from severe flooding after the winter storm.
“A lot of businesses are closed down, and homes damaged. The water just came right in. In Avalon, Stone Harbor, the Wildwoods, Cape May, we’re dealing with some significant flood damage.”…
Sen. Jeff Van Drew (D-Cape May), asked the governor to request that the federal government declare a disaster in two southern counties due to “historic flooding.”
It’s not like Christie just didn’t know. Yesterday the Washington Post, among many other papers, reported under a title about being worse than Sandy:
While the snow piled up in the Washington region, the ocean raged on the coast. For three high tides, the storm known as Snowzilla thrust a hurricane-like surge of water into the coast, producing historic flooding.
At Cape May, N.J., the water level surged to 8.98 feet Saturday morning —theWatch an example of “There is no residual damage, there is no flooding damage” here:highest on record there, and major flood state. It broke the previous record of 8.9 feet set in Hurricane Sandy in 2012.
“High winds from a massive snowstorm pounding the East Coast over the weekend are causing tides higher than those during Superstorm Sandy, causing severe flooding along the New Jersey and Delaware coast. (Reuters)”
If words aren’t enough, and sometimes they aren’t, the NJ.com/Star-Ledger video editors said it best by running b-roll of a truck driving through flooding as the voice over informs the viewer that Chris Christie explained on Morning Joe that there is no residual damage in his state, it’s just the critics talking about what they wish would have happened and doesn’t reflect actual conditions “on the ground”.
After an impressive list of Chris Christie’s lies, Moran concludes, “The bad news for flood victims is that the climate crisis has become another reality that the governor denies.”
“There is no residual damage, there is no flooding damage.” The residents of Flint Michigan probably find this refrain to be very familiar. It also resonates with the denial of the financial collapse leading to the Bush recession.
What do these denials have in common? They serve to excuse Republican ideology from its inevitable consequences. It isn’t that liberals are so smart and have an ideology free from its own inevitable consequences, it’s that currently in this decade, liberals can afford to deal with reality because their ideology is based on addressing it.
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