I take Chris Christie at his word when he says he isn’t running for president in 2012. Neverthless, Team Obama is ready:
Despite New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s repeated pronouncements that he will not seek the GOP presidential nomination, Obama operatives are compiling a dossier of what they call “opposition research” — material that could be used to damage Christie if he changes his mind, The Post has learned.
The Obama campaign is trying to keep its efforts from public view, concerned they would only elevate Christie’s already impressive standing within the Republican Party, sources said. . . .
The operatives have chosen not to dispatch their own people to New Jersey, but instead are talking to people there and in New York who know Christie from his time in the governor’s office, as a gubernatorial candidate and as US attorney.
On the one hand, this looks like mind-games: Democrats are trying to mess with Republicans’ heads, to promote the notion that Team Obama is unbeatable even by the GOP elite’s “dream candidate.” On the other hand, the fear of a ferocious Chicago-style attack is very real, as the New York Times obliquely notes in its story on Mitch Daniels’ decision:
Saying that his family did not want to go through a campaign, Mr. Daniels became the third high-profile Republican in eight days to choose not to compete for the chance to challenge Mr. Obama. . . .
But after weeks of deliberating in public and making clear that his wife and four daughters had deep reservations — caused in part by the knowledge that they would be exposed to intensive scrutiny over a period in the 1990s when Mr. Daniels and his wife, Cheri, divorced and then remarried — he said he was unsuccessful in swaying his family.
The question: By whom would the Daniels family “be exposed to intensive scrutiny” over their previous marital woes? By Team Obama, or by the New York Times?
Or do I repeat myself?
The major media ignored John Edwards’ adultery in 2008, and insisted that Obama’s relationships with Jeremiah Wright and Bill Ayers were irrelevant “distractions.” Yet they stand ready and willing to provide stenography for Team Obama’s opposition-research effort in the 2012 campaign.
