POWIP Piece of Work In Progress

Today’s helping of Chris Christie awesomeness

Comes from a gathering of conservative activists in Iowa where the Governor spoke yesterday.

Now, this is some red-meat, inside baseball kind of stuff, but I thought it needed to be out there for a couple of reasons.  The first is to combat disturbing naysaying of the Governor's conservative bona-fides that arose during the internecine squabbling following the conclusion of the Republican primaries.  During that purity inquisition, when so many long-time, loyal, members of the conservative coalition were declared to be RINO ESTABLISHMENT RETHUG! STOOGES/SHILLS!11!1!, many times by folks that hadn't bothered to get up off the couch and get involved since, oh, say, EVAR!, one of those suddenly called into question was Christie; because he had the audacity to, you know, endorse Mike Castle in the Delaware primary race-QUELLE HORREUR !

But I reject that knee jerk reaction from the johnny come latelies.  To wit:

Christie said Republicans must deliver on their conservative promises if they gain power during the November elections. If they don't follow through, he said voters will send the GOP "to the wilderness, and they are going to send us there for a long, long time."

"As a party, it is put up or shut up time," he said.

"We lost our way a number of years ago, and we became tax and spend light," he said. "Less spending, smaller government, less regulation, smaller government — we're going to be all about that again. We have to step up and stand for those principles again."

He described former President Ronald Reagan as the last truly successful Republican political leader, because he stuck to those basic core principles "and that's what we need to be about today."

Christie is among those who argue that Republicans can succeed when they focus on fiscal conservatism, often at the expense of focusing on key social issues, whereas former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee energize the party's religious and socially conservative base.
[emphasis-ed.]

I mean, I expect the true conservatives to come out any moment and explain to me why statements like these verify that Christie's a candy-assed, establishment tool, RINO.  Or, in fairness, maybe all those heretofore uninvolved true conservatives are waiting for Glenn Beck to voice affirmation for Christie, so that he may be removed from the list of equivalently bad establishment politicians from the equivalently corrupt political parties.  But my axe-grinding over Beck's(who I generally agree with in principle) sloppy logic is taking me too far off topic; I'll reserve that one for another post.

My point here is that despite his endorsement of Castle, or what he may have said about compromise and comity when campaigning for Meg Whitman, it sounds to me like Christie's conservative cred is pretty authentic.  In my humble opinion, no one needs to worry about his staunchness .

And my other point concerns the speculation the he's pullin' an Obama, and just marking time until he can run for the next highest office.  He addressed that in Iowa:

After his speech, Christie insisted he wasn't planning to run for president in 2012 — even though Iowa, home to the nation's first presidential caucus, is a key destination for those with big political aspirations.

"I'm governor of New Jersey, I'm not going to run for national office," Christie told reporters. "You have to want it more than anything else in the world, and I don't. ... You have to be ready for it, and I'm not."

Me?  I believe him.  He has been a man of his word so far, and my intuition is that he won't be changing his stripes anytime soon.

Where do you come down on this.  I Chris Christie the real thing, or should he be booked as the keynote speaker at the next RINO-con?  As always, we here at POWIP are interested in the considered opinions of our kind readers.

Rocketman