Just for the edification of Paul Waldman, the arrogance that leads Chris Christie to insult people who he thinks are stupid isn’t some personality quirk. It’s a cultural trademark of the Garden State that it shares with people from the greater New York metropolitan area. It’s a trait that you can see in Bill Maher in basically equal measure. If you’re looking for another politician, try Bayonne-raised Barney Frank. You can see it in entertainers like Frank Sinatra. Or look at Hall of Fame football coach Bill Parcells.
Most Jersey politicians don’t act like this, but it should be obvious by now that Christie’s act isn’t judged negatively in New Jersey the way it would be in areas of the country where this behavior is unfamiliar. The reason is that telling people that they’re stupid is a state pastime in Jersey.
Of course, this is different than picking on people or “punching down.” It isn’t considered good form to insult someone’s intelligence if they are genuinely “slow.” But, if someone is expressing a strongly held opinion and they’re an idiot, then telling them to shut their stupid face is normal in Jersey.
Whether you find this appealing or abrasive, the important thing is that it doesn’t translate well to other areas of the country. Sure, there’s a subset of people (conservatives) who genuinely enjoy punching down. They like Christie’s act because they don’t really understand it for what it is. They can’t distinguish it from the acts of politicians like Michele Bachmann and Paul Ryan who just insult liberals and poor people and minorities because it’s how they excite the base.
So, yes, Christie will have some problems winning voters in “polite” Iowa, but not so much in the caucuses when he’s appealing to a very conservative base that thinks Christie is beating people up because they are weak instead of because he’s an arrogant prick from Jersey.
