 No Surprises Here For all the headlines we've seen over the last 24 hours, decrying New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, or the Supreme Court, or the West Virginia chemical spill, or even the makeup of Obamacare enrollees, we have to note our relative lack of surprise at any of those stories. Even the silence among Congressional Democrats on the new Iranian sanctions bill floating around Capitol Hill, that Greg Sargent pointed out on Monday, doesn't entirely surprise us.
The fact is, 2014 is an election year, and for members of both parties up and down the ticket, virtually everything is going to be focused on getting elected, re-elected, or positioned for a higher office.
The news that some politicians are going to act like spineless, invertebrate, slugs - especially in an election year - should be the non-event of the season.
Take Gov. Christie's ongoing Bridgegate scandal. For a man with a long history of being a bully, it's now apparent he was throwing his metaphorical weight around, canceling meetings with mayors who disagreed with him. Christie generally being, well... a bully hasn't really surprised many folks. A Pew poll taken since last Thursday shows that the opinion of Chris Christie by most Americans remains largely unchanged since this scandal took over the front pages of most newspaper and news websites - likely because Americans already thought Christie was a typical, mean, slightly corrupt New Jersey politician.
The chemical spill in West Virginia shouldn't be much of a surprise to Americans, either... |
