Lack of details, and silent responses on and from Cristie are very loud!

Christie has been pulling a Corzine for the entire campaign.

Talk about frustrating – kinda. Christie’s lack of details makes it easy to know who the real contender to Corzine should be in November.

He has plans (or does he? Does he even have a clue? Maybe, but I don’t know – that’s the problem) but doesn’t need to explain tham (doesnt that sound familiar?) ?

Does he have a high level of confidence perhaps, that us grassroots voters are going to press that little red button in the polling b ooth because most of the County Chairmen say He’s the man?

Well I for do not intent on voting for a liberal Republican – EVER.  I say liberal because I have no reason to think otherwise. I can only compare him to the other main candidate who believes the devil is in the details and says it like it is – and NO PANDERING.

As a Voter, I must be honest: Cristie’s lack of details are quite telling.  What’s great is that us voters can just do a little research on issues most important to us so we have the ability to make the right decision on Primary and election day..

People ask me what I think about Cristie. The truth is, i don’t hear from the guy or see him answer real questions (just like the Dems). What I do hear is that he’s ducking forums and/or debates. THE SILENCE IS LOUD

What’s Cristies proposals and outlines on taxes, the economy, the Soprano state and the unions, schools, COAH, and the whole laundry list..

I am a voter, and Hello, Mr. Christie: I have no idea. All I hear is  just general rhetoric about “putting an end to it” or something like that.

Contrast that to Lonegan,  and Mayor Lonegan outlines his proposals for real change one by one.

How will Cristie fix the economy and keep businesses from leaving NJ? Does he have a plan?  He  He’s always ducking the details

Hey wait a minute:  Son of a gun…  he’s pulling a Corzine. He has a plan, but “it’s top secret”?

If you’re a conservative first, and a Republican second, Lonegan is your man.

Speaking of silence – here’s a telling article from Star Ledger’s April 30th articlePosted by Paul Mulshine

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Rudy’s not talking either

from the Star-Ledger, Posted by Paul Mulshine April 30, 2009

Shortly after 1 p.m., my phone rang. It was Rudy Giuliani. He was endorsing Chris Christie in the Republican gubernatorial primary. Rudy said, among other things, that Chris Christie is “an economic conservative.”

He is? You sure coulda fooled me. The handpicked candidate of the liberal Republican establishment has spent the past few months ducking questions on economic issues.

For good reason, I suspect. It was the state GOP establishment that gave us such ultra-liberal programs as free preschool for 3- and-4-year-olds under a state constitution that requires schooling only for those between 5 and 18.

“… Christie’s busy blasting opponent Lonegan for the most economically conservative stand in recent memory – a move to a 2.9 percent flat tax as opposed to the expected rate that will exceed 10 percent next year.”

They also gave us that $8.7 billion school-construction program that was squandered on new schools in the cities that cost as much as $175 million per school.

Christie’s opponent, Steve Lonegan, sued his own party to stop that borrowing. I didn’t hear a peep out of Christie at the time – or ever for that matter.

And as I noted in a prior post, Christie’s busy blasting opponent Lonegan for the most economically conservative stand in recent memory – a move to a 2.9 percent flat tax as opposed to the expected rate that will exceed 10 percent next year.

I tried to ask Rudy just what is economically conservative about that.

Rudy didn’t answer. He just hung up.

ALSO: Check this Philadelphia Inquirer piece in which Lonegan proposes standing up to the state Supreme Court and distributing school-funding on a fair basis. Again, Christie’s silence speaks volumes.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Lonegan said yesterday that he would cut court-ordered funding to New Jersey’s poorest school districts and equalize state subsidies to all districts.

“It is a noble goal to strive to provide a quality education for every student . . .,” he said, “but I submit that the current [school funding] formula is a complete failure, a miserable failure not only in that it’s failed to provide a quality education, but in the impact it has had on taxpayers.”

ATTENTION BASHERS, Just for the record, Huckabee record in Arkansas mostly praised

“…55 percent of Arkansas voters last year said they still liked Huckabee — 10 years after he first took office.”

The truth is that Mike Huckabee encourages everyone to look at his record, while Mitt Romney hopes everyone can forget all about his – that’s the basis for the relentless misleading attacks, otherwise people may actually inspect his record and ask “what in the world is this guy doing running as a Republican?” 

Now for the article….. 

By Mike Madden (text highlights are my own)
Gannett News Service

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — Mike Huckabee may have been an unknown commodity to most of the country until a few weeks ago, but not here.

As governor for more than 10 years, Huckabee kept a high profile in Arkansas, whether he was pushing for highway improvements or exhorting his fellow citizens to lose weight. As lieutenant governor, the Republican Huckabee moved up in July 1996, when Democratic Gov. Jim Guy Tucker resigned after a fraud conviction. Huckabee then won two terms of his own.

He left the statehouse in January and started what looked like a long-shot presidential campaign. Now, propelled by support from evangelical Christians in Iowa, Huckabee leads polls there and is second to former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani in most national surveys.

For those who knew him here, Huckabee’s sudden rise in the GOP presidential campaign mirrored his career in Arkansas politics, where he blended social conservatism with economic populism and used his quick wit and roots as a Southern Baptist preacher to win over voters.

“The fact is that he placed himself squarely where most Arkansans are,” said Janine Parry, a political science professor at the University of Arkansas, who runs the school’s Arkansas Poll.

Parry noted that 55 percent of Arkansas voters last year said they still liked Huckabee — 10 years after he first took office.

“(That’s) pretty respectable, especially for anyone who’s served more than six to eight years in public life,” Perry said.

On the campaign trail, Huckabee, 52, talks frequently and proudly about his accomplishments here — how he pushed for badly needed improvements to the state’s highway and road infrastructure; how he expanded ARKids First, the state’s health insurance program for children in poor and working-class families; how he championed school reforms that consolidated some rural districts, though he disagreed with the Democratic Legislature over the final shape of that plan.

He was occasionally more liberal than his campaign positions are now. On immigration, he pushed to allow in-state tuition for some illegal immigrant kids who graduated from Arkansas high schools, though he lost that fight. He recruited the Mexican government to open a consulate in the state, and he opposed a Republican bill in the Legislature that would have denied health care for illegal immigrants.

But throughout his tenure, Huckabee was a Republican governor in a Democratic state, with a constitution that limited the power he could wield on his own. That left him with a narrow margin to operate from in the state.

“He was a pragmatic conservative, not an ideologue, and I saw that as his strong point,” said Rex Nelson, Huckabee’s spokesman for most of his gubernatorial term and a former Arkansas political journalist.

Some of Huckabee’s pragmatic politicking infuriated the Republican base in Arkansas, especially his support for a variety of tax increases that helped fund some of the improvements he advocated. Huckabee campaigned aggressively for diesel and gas tax hikes to pay for road projects, for a sales tax increase to improve state parks and for a tax on nursing homes to cover Medicaid shortfalls. Though his campaign frequently touts the 90 taxes he cut overall, the state’s tax revenues increased during his tenure by almost $500 million.

“He thinks about government as running a business, and he needs more revenue to run his programs, and he doesn’t think twice about increasing those taxes,” said Patrick Briney, head of the Arkansas Republican Assembly, a conservative group that has been loudly critical of Huckabee’s tax record.

The Club for Growth, a national anti-tax organization, also has blasted Huckabee’s tax policy, buying hundreds of thousands of dollars of advertising in New Hampshire and other key early primary states to attack him.

In debates and in stump speeches, Huckabee’s jokes and one-liners have helped him attract attention on the presidential trail. He also employed wit during his days as governor. But critics said he frequently took disagreements personally and that he could flash a temper that, so far, hasn’t appeared much in his national campaign.

He once ordered his press office to take the Arkansas Times, a Little Rock alternative weekly paper, off the list for news releases, and called conservative Republicans who differed with him on financial issues “Shiites,” implying they were radicals.

“If you did not agree with him on a policy issue, he took it personally,” said Randy Minton, of Ward, Ark., a former GOP lawmaker who was one of Huckabee’s critics during his four years in the Legislature. Minton campaigned for Huckabee during elections in the 1990s but split with him on taxes.

Huckabee mostly shrugs off such attacks, saying the taxes were necessary to pay for popular programs.

His allies point out that Minton and other critics are so conservative that they’re marginalized in Arkansas politics, a point analysts agree with.

“This is the scrutiny that I’ve been going through since I first put my name on the ballot in 1992, and for me, it’s sort of like, ‘Gosh, do they not have anything new?'” Huckabee said last week while campaigning in Iowa.

And among Arkansans, the affable nature that Huckabee displays on the campaign trail mostly helped keep him popular.

“He’s like a common guy,” said Ron Platzer, 65, a boat salesman from Hot Springs, Ark.