Blog 10

When you click on the “Issues” link on Chris Christie’s website it brings you to a page where there are a total of 9 issues at the top with a link to click on to go directly to the spot on the page he lays out his plan for the issue. The nine issues highlighted are:

- Criminal Justice

- Entitlements

- Foreign Policy

- Education 

- Economy

- Border Security and Immigration

- Healthcare for America’s Veterans

It comes as no surprise that criminal justice is the first link displayed because the overall theme and image Chris Christie wants to build an image of being a crime fighter and law enforcer since that is what he has been doing for most of his life.  Foreign policy is also up there high because with Isis threating America and our allies, it is going to be crucial for the next president to have a good plan for combating Isis and keeping America safe. Also, the amount of information on different subtopics in these two categories is much greater than the other seven issues.

Chris Christie's Issues Page

The opponent of Chris Christie’s I looked at was Marco Rubio and how his “Issues” page differs from Chris Christie’s. I like Macro Rubio’s more because he lies out his plan on some many more issues than Christie does. There were a total of 32 different topics under Rubio’s issues page and I think this is better for the public because one it is easy to navigate through and find the one you are concerned about and the odds of finding the issue you want to know about is likely because the page covers just about everything. Both pages are specific with the plans they have to fix the issues America is facing. Another difference between the two is Christie does not talk about gun control while Rubio talks about the issue and talks about his plan to protect the 2^nd amendment. One difference between Rubio and Christie is when it comes to immigration, Christie spent some time talking about his plan to punish companies that hire illegal immigrants where as Rubio did not touch on this subject. Compared to Marco Rubio’s page, Chris Christie’s “Issues” page is missing a lot of details about many issues and one of those being healthcare. Christie only talks about his plans for helping senior citizens with healthcare, but he does not talk about a plan he has for the rest of America, which I thought was very shocking to see.

Marco Rubio's Issues Page

After taking the time to really analyze Chris Christie’s “Issue” page to Marco Rubio’s, it is no surprise Rubio continues to rise in the polls where as Christie continues to be near the bottom.  Many people who visit the page, just like me now, will have many questions about how he will handle a variety of different issues because he did not cover a whole lot compared to Marco Rubio. Chris Christie needs to be more in depth and cover a larger variety of issues so America’s can understand what Christie’s agenda will be if he is in fact elected to be the next President of the United States.   

                       

Blog 9

When I did a Google news search for Chris Christie, there are a lot of articles that come up that having headlines indicating conflict going on between Christie and another candidate.  ABC wrote the first article and the headline reads “ Chris Christie Explains Why GOP Voters Are Supporting Donald Trump.”  Below this main article are a list of other articles that deal with both Christie and Trump. Some of the articles that stuck out to me was one about Christie warning the public of a Trump and another one has a heading that states “Chris Christie Imitates Donald Trump”, this article will be an interesting story to follow to see how Trump responds if he feels the need to do so. PoliticusUSA wrote the next main article and the heading was “GOP Email Scandal Explodes As Chris Christie Accused of Hiding 9,428 Emails And Documents”. This is not the type of publicity Chris Christie needs right now with the way his numbers have been. A scandal like this could be detrimental to the campaign and force him to drop out of the race. This also makes Christie look really bad especially of how adamant he has been for getting Hilary Clinton to release her emails.

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/chris-christie-imitate-donald-trump/story?id=35155377

 http://www.kmbz.com/Chris-Christie-Imitates-Donald-Trump/22170406

http://www.politicususa.com/2015/11/12/clinton-attack-dog-chris-christie-accused-hiding-9428-emails-documents.html

When it comes to who is covering Christie, it really is a variety of people and not just one new outlet. The most of one outlet I saw was the New York Times with two articles. The first set of articles about Christie and Trump come from Christie generating the news because he is making the statement and he was the one who chose to do the imitation. With the new scandal that has just came out this is all from the media. Christie’s campaign would not want this type of news to get out because of how badly this may hurt the campaign and now it is reminding people about the bridge scandal Christie was involved in earlier in his career as governor of New Jersey.

Currently the stories the media are writing about Christie are not setting him up for success in 2016. None of the top stories are about any policies or plans he has if he were to be elected president. With this new email scandal coming out about him, this is not the publicity that will boost him in the polls, it will only hurt the few supporters he has currently. The publicity Christie should be seeking moving forward should be stories about a great debate performance or about good things he has done on the campaign trail. Right now it seems like he is getting sucked into the Trump way and he is trying to use Trump’s strategy of arrogance in attacking him and it really does not look good for Christie in my opinion. He also needs to get more media attention on his policies because after doing this search, I do not believe I saw one posting in the top news stories about Christie’s policies. If people are unaware of good policies Christie may have, then it will make it harder for people to support him because they will not know about the good and the negative stories will overshadow the good.    

 

Blog #8

When I saw the prompt for this week I knew this was going to be a fun one to write about. I am a big fan of the tonight show and watch it about every night and on the show in most of the opening monologues, Jimmy Fallon loves to crack jokes about Chris Christie’s weight. In this particular episode, the Tonight Show band, “The Roots” and Fallon have fun with a story about Christie spending 82 thousand dollars at a concession stand at MetLife Stadium. This makes Christie look like someone who cannot control his eating. Now it is no secret that Christie is overweight and it has been something that has provided a lot of punch lines for late night talk shows. Many have questioned whether or not Christie could handle the stress that comes with the job of being president because of his health issues. This monologue just reinforces the beliefs many already have and continues to focus everyone’s attention on his weight and away from his messages. Chris Christie’s weight is with out a doubt going against his chances of winning. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUgn9QxBbro

 

The headline of Christie is not working in his favor by any means. Obviously he did not buy 82 thousand dollars worth of food for himself. His generosity of buying food for others is over looked though because that is not what will get the laughs.

 

When looking back at blog #2, I wrote about Chris Christie wanting to establish himself as a president who would enforce the rules and be a strong leader. He would be someone who would close the loopholes and stop letting the wealthy get away without paying their fair share. Have all of that in mind, this image pop culture is creating is taking away from the image he is trying to create. I do not know about you, but when I make an image of a strong leader in my head, one of the things I picture is someone who is in good physical shape. One thing that crossed my mind was how can we trust Christie to have the discipline to hold others accountable when he cannot even keep himself accountable and loose the weight. He has made it public that he gets annoyed with the fat jokes, but yet he has done nothing to stop them. I do not think this artifact will totally change the image Christie is trying to create. It definitely hurts it because some people may not vote for him solely because of his weight. Like I said earlier, when we think of a law enforcer and someone who is a good leader, we think of that person being in great physical shape. If Christie really wants to help his image and dodge the late night punch lines, the bets thing for him would be to go on a date and lose some of the weight.