Now, don't get me wrong. I find Christie's brash style refreshing. But we're so accustomed to political flimflam that, as Daniel Patrick Moynihan might have put it, we're defining truth-telling down. For Christie to be rhapsodized for saying we need to reform entitlements without adding that federal taxes will have to rise as America ages makes him a half-truth-teller at best.
And half-truths are all we have from the GOP so far.
Thanks to House budget chief Paul Ryan, it's possible to measure the size of this fraud. And it's colossal. As can never be said often enough, Ryan is absurdly hailed as a fiscal "conservative" for a "roadmap" that doesn't balance the budget until the 2060s and that adds an unthinkable $62 trillion to the national debt between now and then. How can this be the case when Ryan puts forward trims for Social Security and Medicare so "bold" that most Republicans wouldn't dream of supporting them? Because Ryan also pretends we can keep federal taxes at their recent historic levels of 19 percent of gross domestic product as the boomers age.
No can do. The math doesn't work. Ryan's endless red ink proves this.
Christie's big straight-talk credential so far is his willingness to stare down the teachers unions. Their archaic practices need to be challenged, and Christie deserves credit for taking them on. But is it really "courageous?" Courage is when a politician tells his strongest supporters things they don't want to hear. I'm a little tired of Republicans calling for an "adult conversation" that mainly takes things away from adults who don't vote Republican.
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