Chris Christie, GOP dark horse for 2012?

A bit premature but interesting. I agree with the article that, at the present time, the Republicans do not have a strong leader that represents the core values of the party. Christie is showing some "good stuff", but is not yet strong in "executive" experience and has one of my personal negatives, he is a "lawyer". I guess this can be overlooked because he was a good lawyer, a "prosecutor".

Excerpt: Suddenly, you can't go a day without stumbling upon a new glowing profile of Chris Christie from a conservative writer.

On Thursday, George Will described Christie, New Jersey's new chief executive, as "the nation's most interesting governor." Fred Barnes, in the latest Weekly Standard, devoted 1,741 words to him. And in the Wall Street Journal last week, columnist William McGurn praised Christie for "offering the voters a dose of Reagan Republicanism -- with a Jersey twist." And then there's Rush Limbaugh, who recently treated his listeners to a dramatic reading of Christie's budget address to the state Legislature.

"Is it wrong to love another man?" Limbaugh asked. "Because I love Chris Christie."

On one level, the reason for the right's sudden infatuation with the Garden State's governor is obvious. New Jersey is one of the nation's most liberal states, a place where it’s long been assumed Republicans could only win by moving to the left on social issues and cozying up to the powerful public employees unions -- and even then, they'd still need to get lucky. This was the basic blueprint used by Tom Kean and Christie Whitman, who were the only two Republicans to win statewide elections in New Jersey for 36 years -- until last November.

That's when Christie, a pro-life, anti-gay marriage Republican, unseated Jon Corzine by four points -- a landslide by New Jersey Republican standards. His victory was mainly a referendum on Corzine -- there's the getting lucky part -- but since taking office, he's happily picked a fight with the state's public school teachers, slashed the state budget by gutting local aid, and refused to extend the state's "millionaire's tax." National conservatives have never seen anything quite like this in New Jersey, so of course Christie has caught their eye. Read full article here.