If there's only one thing Chris Christie wants to make sure you know after his appearance at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Thursday, it's this: He really, really doesn't like the New York Times.
At one point, he told conservative radio host Laura Ingraham, who was interviewing him at the conservative conclave, that he doesn't subscribe to the New York Times. Take that!
"I have the New York Times in my media gaggle every day," Christie told Ingraham at another point. "They just want to kill you; that's what they do to me every day." Still standing!
And, when asked what he had given up for Lent, Christie responded: "I'm giving up the New York Times for Lent." But, wait! He wasn't done, adding that his priest told him, "'Chris, that's not acceptable, you'll have to give up something you'll actually miss.'" BOOM!
In his attacks on the Old Gray Lady, Christie was following a tried and true strategy for Republican candidates trying to prove their conservative credentials to a skeptical crowd: Attack the media. While he hammered the Times by name, repeatedly, Christie was actually doing a bit of media metonymy in his remarks -- using the Times as a stand-in for all of the media that is, allegedly, out to get him.
Given that virtually every attendee at CPAC believes whole-heartedly that the media is hopelessly biased and liberal, Christie probably won some points for his full frontal assault on the Times. But, interestingly, the Times isn't even close to the least-trusted news source by conservatives. In an October 2014 Pew poll, MSNBC won that "honor," with three in four people who identified as "consistently conservative" saying they distrusted the cable network. The Times was all the way down in sixth place -- below all three of the broadcast networks and CNN.
Blaming the Times -- or any/all other media outlets -- for Christie's political problems is, of course, misguided. After all, the media didn't create the Bridgegate story; that was two of Christie's top aides. And the media isn't responsible for Christie's poor standing in early state polling. But, for today, blaming the media worked; the enemy of my enemy is my friend, and all that.
One wonders if the Times will somehow be able to to pick itself up and go on after the battering it took at the governor's hands.
Chris Cillizza writes “The Fix,” a politics blog for the Washington Post. He also covers the White House.
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