Christie for Prez?

New Jersey Governor Christie, speaking to the firefighters' union, whose pensions he is trying to save by making the hard decisions necessary to get the plan back into solvency:

Mr. Christie had proposed raising their retirement age, eliminating the cost-of-living adjustment, increasing employee pension contributions, and rolling back a 9% pay increase approved years before "by a Republican governor and a Republican Legislature."

As Mr. Chrisie recounted it: "You can imagine how that was received by 7,500 firefighters. As I walked into the room and was introduced. I was booed lustily. I made my way up to the stage, they booed some more. . . . So I said, 'Come on, you can do better than that,' and they did!"

He crumpled up his prepared remarks and threw them on the floor. He told them, "Here's the deal: I understand you're angry, and I understand you're frustrated, and I understand you feel deceived and betrayed." And, he said, they were right: "For 20 years, governors have come into this room and lied to you, promised you benefits that they had no way of paying for, making promises they knew they couldn't keep, and just hoping that they wouldn't be the man or women left holding the bag. I understand why you feel angry and betrayed and deceived by those people. Here's what I don't understand. Why are you booing the first guy who came in here and told you the truth?"

Presidential. And he outmaneuvers reporters effortlessly.

He is looking more like my guy every day. God knows we're way overdue for a real leader in the White House.

I can already hear some rumblings from the far right about "Christie is soft on immigration" or "he'll let the fags live together" or "he doesn't believe in *insert pet cause here*". You know what? Get the fuck over it.

If we all sit around waiting on our Perfect Candidate, we're going to end up with Obama for another four years -- or worse -- and then you can just kiss your precious conservative ideals goodbye. This is the time to pull together and find a strong leader you can stomach, someone who is going to act to get the country moving in the proper fiscal direction again. All your pet peeves can wait. Make a choice, or the press will shove another McCain into the GOP spotlight, blinking and looking like an ineffectual dork.

Full article at WSJ here. If you don't have a WSJ subscription, just Google "where the leaders are WSJ" (without the quotes) and the backdoor link will pop up at the top of the search.