The Governor of New Jersey gave the keynote address to the Republican Convention last night and in a way it was fitting.
My title above comes from a very famous headline in the show business newspaper, Variety, “Wall Street Lays an Egg” dealing with the 1929 stock market crash. Herbert Hoover was the Republican president at the time and frankly many of the delegates to this convention, including ,are in their stated policies to the right of Hoover
In terms of what he has both done and tried to do, no one who is knowledgeable about New Jersey politics knows of a more reactionary governor, a more anti-labor governor, and a more personally abusive governor in the state’s modern history.
Christie for those reasonswas very much at home, addressing a Republican convention whose platform combines the economic philosophy of Milton Friedman with, in terms of civil rights, women’s rights, and civil liberties the legal and social philosophy of Savonarola, a leader of the Inquisition (who, if he was not dead for centuries, might have been the delegates first choice for keynote speaker).
The Republicans are, to use a term once used on the left, “hiding the face of the party” at this convention. The “tea party” Congressmen and women are not on the platform looking skyward as they speak of the capitalist utopia to come after social security, Medicare, the Federal Reserve, maybe even the federal government, are no more.
Pat Robertson is not up there howling that God is coming to wreak vengeance on feminists, gays and worst of all, liberals. Instead, Anne Romney, looking country club Republican and speaking what George W. Bush’s propagandists called “compassionate conservatism” was up there standing by, up, and for her man. And, for those who don’t really know much about her man, she was pretty effective. Much more so than Christie
Republican women governors are being highlighted along with other Republican women politicians. Wow , one might almost forget that the Republicans are committed to repealing the Lily Ledbetter Equal Pay Act, a major achievement of the Obama administration. That they since the Reagan administration have through the presidency and the federal judiciary done everything they could to eliminate and, failing that, undermine the enforcement of affirmative action policy for minorities and women.
And the Republicans obsessive compulsive public sector budget cutting, which has hit hardest at both public sector professional employment, teaching and social work, for example, and public sector clerical work, areas where women workers and heavily concentrated.
Finally, of course, their support for an “ironclad” ban on abortion would set women’s right to control their bodies back long before Roe v. Wade(while of course setting the stage for the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade).
Christie did try to get with the Romney program, which was something like a cross between a shareholders’ meeting and a self-improvement seminar, selling American history as the history of individual enterprise, upwardly mobile immigrants, and voluntary organizations.
He talked of the great American work ethic (not that Americans work longer hours than workers in other developed countries with far less social supports). Then he hailed the U.S. Constitution as a model for people through the developing world(this from a man who issues dictatorial directives on everything he thinks he can get away with talking to a party which believes that the Bill of Rights ceased to have meaning after September 11, 2001).
But Christie couldn’t stop himself from attacking public employee unions and especially teachers unions. Away from the shareholders and the get rich quick audience, he had to make his way back to the political gutter I guess it is like the large quantities of junk food insiders say he continues to eat. His propagandists leak stories to the press that he has a personal trainer and is committed to losing weight. But then everyone has to look at him(as they did last night) and realize that its false. He can neither control his appetites or his class hatred of those whose work tries to teach, serve, and protect people.
It’s that way with Christie and unions, especially teachers unions. He has got to curse them rather than con them, which his fellow Republicans and many more Democrats were adept at.
Even if he had a personal personality trainer, Christie on that stage just couldn’t control himself. He didn’t call the National Education Association the National Extortion Association as he has done in New Jersey, But he blasted teachers unions as enemies of parents, teachers, and students and dared to portray himself as the someone who “believes “in teachers while his opponents believe in teacher unions.
What has Christie done in New Jersey, with the support of powerful South Jersey Democrats whom he cuts in and buys off ?
He has used public employees generally and teachers specially as political punching bags, forced through legislation to undermine tenure rights, reduce pension benefits, vilify teachers the way Ronald Reagan, Newt Gingrich, et al vilified people on welfare as parasites, thieves, worthless people living off middle class taxpayers.
He has also sought to force property tax caps on counties and communities which would compel local governments to either lay off police, fire, teachers and other public employees and/or(most likely and) reduce their salaries and benefits, What he and like minded Republican governors through the country are trying to do is to both destroy public sector unions which have developed largely over the last half century and destroy also the professionalization of public employees, teachers and also police.
If you see the United States as something like the Caribbean resort islands, protected enclaves for the wealthy surrounded by poverty, then this does make a certain sense. If capital and jobs are to be exported and the U.S. capitalist class is to live on its “investments” in cheap overseas labor, then they don’t need an educated work force here. Their children can go to private schools or abroad. For those who are really greedy, they can get “vouchers” to partially defray the cost of their private schools and underfund the public schools at an even higher level the same way.
Who will teach in the public schools. Many of the people who work at Wal-Mart, Target, and similar import stores, without unions, pensions, professional education and professional salaries. They will probably consider themselves a cut above McDonalds workers, as they do now
They will have little training or background in their subject areas and tell probably students to look things up on the internet, if they have a computer. Or find a way to get money and go to a real school, a private school
But Christie’s speech as even most of the media noted, was very much of a flop. Even many of the Republican delegates looked bored and high definition television was no help to him either. He really looked like he need help, but I guess the only thing his fellow Republicans might suggest would be anger management after the elections
Maybe after the Citizens United decision, Romney may be tempted to run the election like the plot of the old Mel Brooks movie, the Producers, to lose it and then pocket tens of millions and invest it abroad to add to his personal wealth. That might explain having someone like Christie give the keynote address. Actually, that would fit nicely with the last thirty years of Republican policy . It would much better for the country than a Romney victory, and given both the Citizens United decision and the present state of the Supreme Court, they might even get away with it.
Norman Markowitz
