ABOVE: Christie deals with political fallout after revelation of Washington Bridge shutdown scandal
WASHINGTON – George W. Bush’s onetime envoy to Canada says a new traffic scandal has dealt a blow, although not necessarily a fatal one, to the American presidential prospects of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.
That assessment was offered Sunday by David Wilkins, the former U.S. ambassador who remains a player in Republican party politics as a prominent figure in the key GOP primary state of South Carolina.
“It certainly was a blow to his efforts,” Wilkins told The Canadian Press in an interview.
“It certainly does short-term damage. Does it do any long-term damage to his campaign? I think it’s too early to tell. I think you have to wait and see if anything else comes out.”
Different polls have suggested Christie might be the GOP candidate with the best shot at beating Hillary Clinton if they both run, although a new survey suggests his popularity has taken a hit in New Jersey.
An early battle line in that 2016 presidential race has been drawn – and it sits on a traffic-choked bridge to Jersey, after leaked emails suggested Christie’s closest allies intentionally created traffic bedlam to punish political opponents.
Some members of the Republican establishment have emerged to defend Christie in the face of that scandal, which has threatened his status as the presumptive darling of the party brass.
Those expressions of support emerged from various pockets over the weekend, including in an NBC survey of party operatives in important primary states including Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina.
Those states will play a determining role in a race already being cast as a struggle for the soul of the Republican party, pitting the traditional big-business wing against the increasingly powerful grassroots alliance of libertarians and social conservatives.
Wilkins, for his part, hasn’t decided whom to assist in the 2016 race. He says Christie remains among the half-dozen prospective Republican contenders.
“He’s one of the players. But it’s a long way off and the jury’s still out on how he will play in the South,” Wilkins said.
He said the embattled governor performed about as well as he could have during a marathon news conference where he answered questions for nearly two hours.
High-level Republicans did the rounds of the weekly political talk shows Sunday and all appeared to have the governor’s back – or, at the very least, refrained from twisting the knife.
One defender was the man who led Bush’s campaigns.
Karl Rove applauded the governor’s handling of the affair. In a 108-minute news conference last week, Christie insisted he’d known nothing of any vengeance scheme and that he’d fired or sidelined those accused of conspiring in it. He also went through a gamut of emotions on the public stage, including admitting to having trouble sleeping.
“I think he did himself a lot of good by stepping forward and being very straightforward and very candid and very blunt,” Rove told Fox News Sunday.
“I think he did himself some good by contrasting with the normal, routine way of handling these things. Which is to be evasive, trim around the edges… In fact I think his handling of this — being straightforward, taking action, saying, ‘I’m responsible,’ firing the people — probably gives him some street cred with tea party Republicans who say, ‘That’s what we want in a leader. Somebody who steps up and takes responsibility.’ ”
There were similar remarks from the chairman of the Republican National Committee, Reince Priebus, and from former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani, who was himself once seen as a northeastern Republican moderate with presidential potential.
Giuliani called the governor’s performance last week “pretty darn” credible but, like several other commentators, he added an asterisk: if it turns out Christie was less than truthful, his career would be “at risk.”
VIDEO: Chris Christie is sad rather than angry over staff betrayal
Just before the bridge scandal erupted, a poll by Quinnipiac University suggested Christie might be the most-liked of all possible presidential candidates, boasting strong support from independents.
But that same poll showed him as the 10th-most popular candidate among respondents who identified themselves as Republicans. Another party moderate, Bush’s brother Jeb, scored higher, as did numerous other possible candidates from the party’s more conservative wing.
That ambivalence has been on display in the wake of the scandal. Tea party types have been more likely to criticize Christie, or simply damn him with silence.
To the conservative commentator-in-chief, the emails looked pretty bad.
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