Reprinted from Antiwar
There's a group of GOP presidential aspirants who have a next-to-zero chance of clinching the nomination who've decided that their main issue, the central organizing principle of their campaigns, is going to be needling Rand Paul. While Lindsey Graham is competing for the prize in this contest, the latest entrant in this subset of losers is New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who has attacked libertarianism as "a dangerous thought," and whose habit of arranging epic traffic jams in retaliation against his political opponents torpedoed his presidential ambitions. But megalomaniacs aren't deterred by low single-digit poll numbers, and Christie is charging ahead -- straight at Sen. Paul. In an appearance on MSNBC the other day, he vomited up his bile:
"People are really worried about ISIS, they're worried about the threat of terrorism, and that's why what Rand Paul has done to make this country weaker and more vulnerable is a terrible thing. And for him to raise money off of it? It's disgraceful. As a former prosecutor in this race who's used the Patriot Act, we're gonna look back on this -- listen this morning -- we're gonna look back on this. He should be in hearings in front of Congress if there's another attack, not the director of the FBI or the director of the CIA."
What's interesting about this is a) Christie's prescription for fighting ISIS, and b) his mention of his own role as a prosecutor in using the Patriot Act to get convictions. On the former: he says the US shouldn't send any of its own troops, and that we should let our regional allies do the fighting -- which is, not coincidentally, the same line taken by Sen. Paul. On the second point, Christie unintentionally undermines his own narrative, as this Intercept story on his legal shenanigans in the Fort Dix "bomb plot" case makes all too clear. In that case, as The Intercept puts it,