Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey seems to have a love/hate relationship with unions - meaning he loves them on Mondays and hates them on Fridays.
In early March, while all of the attention was focused on Wisconsin and the daily occupation by protestors of the Madison state-house, Chris Christie professed that he "loves" collective bargaining.
Gov. Chris Christie says he has “love” for the collective bargaining process, even as other Republican governors are pushing to limit or end the negotiation process with public unions in their states.
“I love collective bargaining,” the New Jersey Republican said at a town hall meeting in Hillsborough, N.J., on Wednesday.
Anyone who doubted the sincerity of Chris Christie's devout love of negotiating with unions would be the wiser.
Here he is speaking to ABC's Diane Sawyer yesterday.
In an interview Wednesday night, the governor told ABC's World News host Diane Sawyer that New Jersey teachers were wonderful public servants but that the New Jersey Education Association (NJEA) was a "group of political thugs.""Governor Christie’s name-calling is a tired attempt to draw attention away from the fact that he chose to cut taxes for millionaires, rather than fund the state’s public schools," NJEA President Barbara Keshishian responded in a statement.
Sawyer could barely get a question in between swooning over Christie's serious double-speak, but here is the relevant video clip:
Sawyer: Do you want to apologize to the teachers if your tone seemed disrespectful to them?Christie: I don't want to apologize to those teachers. If you treat me with respect, even if you don't agree with me, I'll treat you with respect back.
I tried to find an example where negotiating or bargaining meant anything other than telling teachers to go screw themselves for Chris Christie, but so far I've come up empty-handed. He seems to be all demands and no concessions, but the very serious media continue to be enamored with his supposedly good-hearted negotiating bonafieds.There seems to be a correlation between the media's love of Paul Ryan and Chris Christie and a comparable disconnect between fantasy and reality.