A Call To Liberty For Chris Christie

Christie Needs To Run As A Libertarian Republican.
By Ryan P. Christiano.

The numbers tell the tale, if former United State’s Attorney Chris Christie is going to have a chance of defeating the profoundly unpopular Democrat incumbent Governor, Jon Corzine, he must look toward liberty.

This past summer, Mr. Christie enjoyed a double digit lead over Governor Corzine. New Jersey’s fiscal crisis is of a magnitude that is nearly beyond comprehension. The reality of a bankrupt state also having the distinction of being the highest taxed state in the nation should have had Mr. Christie winning the election from his porch armchair, while he slowly sipped lemonade.

Add to the mix an unemployment rate of ten percent, the highest in the Garden State in well over two decades, and it seemed New Jersey Republicans were about to retake the Governor’s mansion after years in the political wilderness.

Now, Mr. Christie suddenly finds himself in a time, and race, that he most likely does not recognize. An insurgent Independent candidate, Mr. Chris Daggett, has come out of nowhere. He is barnstorming the state with the energy and passion of a young Paul Revere, warning of partisan traitors, in a state where fifty percent of the population are registered as ‘unaffiliated’.

In other words, Mr. Daggett’s message is catching on. A more immediate concern for Mr. Christie is that Mr. Daggett is siphoning votes from Mr. Christie, and not Governor Corzine. Most polls show Daggett averaging about twelve percent. Daggett’s showing is quite astonishing for such a traditionally liberal, partisan state.

Mr. Daggett is unlikely to win the election; however, he has now demonstrated the best showing for an Independent or third party candidate running in a New Jersey gubernatorial election since Murray Sabrin, a Libertarian.

Mr. Christie is running a Republican Party primary campaign in the general election. He needs to infuse his message, agenda, and vision with a healthy dose of liberty, if he is to have any chance of defeating an entrenched billionaire such as Governor Corzine.

A wide swath of New Jersey citizens are fiscally conservative to moderate, while reflecting a more moderate temperament on social issues. A social conservative cannot win statewide elected office in New Jersey. This has been the political reality for the past several decades.

Mr. Christie’s recent pronouncements of vetoing any bill on his desk that legalizes same-sex marriage have caused him harm. Moreover, his constant equivocations on the medicinal marijuana legislation that is currently winding its way through the state assembly, and its probable passage, have not helped.

Both issues have a significant groundswell of support among the citizenry, and Mr. Christie’s pandering to a base he has already captured, is complicating his campaign.

Mr. Christie does not have to support either issue if his conscience does not permit, however, he could take a conservative stance and declare that the people should decide on the role and scope of government in these matters through referenda.

Mr. Christie additionally needs to advance several unconventional fiscal policies. Mr. Daggett is calling for a mixture of tax decreases and revenue stream reallocations, i.e. new types of taxation, while Mr. Corzine is touting phantom property tax reform in a state beleaguered by astronomical property taxes. Mr. Christie can do one better.

He can call for an across the board one time flat tax, or even better yet, a gradual phasing in of a user-fee government, an incremental shifting away from direct taxation, to a fiscal model based on payment only for the government services each individual utilizes. This policy has already been introduced into the debate by the Libertarian gubernatorial candidate, Mr. Kaplan.

Chris Christie has a unique opportunity; a center-left state is fed up with failed decades old statist policies from both sides of the aisle. He can turn the page and reorient his vision toward liberty.

Mr. Christie should have a streamlined and coherent defense of economic and social liberty. Where else would a call to liberty resonant as deeply, than in a state that has been witness to, General Washington valiantly leading his men across the icy and foggy waters of the Delaware River, to the whispered promise of freedom beyond.