New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie visited New Hampshire Monday, for the first time this year, and stressed the importance of being blunt, according to local media accounts.
“I had one of your leaders say to me today, ‘We don’t want some kinder, gentler Chris Christie ,’ we want the real Chris Christie,” he told the Concord/ Merrimack County Republican Lincoln-Reagan Dinner. “Well, there’s one Chris Christie, everybody. This is it. And there should be some comfort for you in that, I hope.”
His comments, reported by the Concord Monitor’s Casey McDermott, appeared to take a somewhat different tone than his remarks in Iowa last month. Christie emphasized to the Iowa Freedom Summit crowd that Iowa values were very much like those of New Jersey conservatives. Monday, McDermott reported, Christie, who is considering a bid for the Republican presidential nomination, kept stressing how people may not always agree with him, but he’ll stick to his views.
“If we hold our candidates to public office to that standard of agreeing 100 percent of the time, let me tell you what you’re going to get: Liars,” he said.
The New Hampshire Journal’s John DiStaso noted these comments from Christie: “I’m told every once in a while that I’m a little bit too blunt, too direct. I like to fight a little bit every once in a while.”
Get used to it, he said. “There’s only one Chris Christie, this is it,” he said.
He explained he’s “the product of an Irish father and a Sicilian mother. What that means is, I’ve been trained for a long time in conflict resolution.”
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