GOP no longer going long on Christie? [View all]

[herding cats]

The GOP support of Christie's bid to be their presidential nominee in 2016 has become tepid at best.

Inside the Republican Party, the once constant talk of Mr. Christie’s path to the White House has quieted. “I think anything about a 2016 deal, at this point, is on the back burner,” said Ray Washburne, the finance chairman of the Republican National Committee.

“He’s going into battle with armor that’s now a little bit dented,” said Steve Munisteri, the chairman of the Republican Party of Texas. Potential backers for a presidential run, he added, “now have pause.”

Whatever the lasting damage to Mr. Christie’s political brand, Republicans said, the puzzling traffic imbroglio has laid bare his weaknesses: a stubborn insularity, the absence of a national infrastructure and a tendency to be flip and glib, which haunted him at the start of the bridge scandal.

Michael Steele, a former chairman of the Republican National Committee, told an audience at a Palm Beach luncheon on Friday that the governor should have stayed home to “focus on the people of New Jersey.”

“I probably would have canceled that if I were in his position only because, guess what happened yesterday?” he said. “They dropped 20 subpoenas on him, and so now that’s baggage that’s going to come into the conversation he’s having here.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/19/nyregion/gop-advice-for-christie-pick-a-better-team.html

Now Christie also has the new scandal with the Hoboken Mayor Dawn Zimmer, and the withholding of the Sandy relief funds to further tarnish his brand. It's looking increasingly less likely Christie will regain his status as the GOP's Golden Boy for 2016.

With more than 700 days until the Iowa caucuses anything is possible, but there's no denying the fall Christie has taken since his reelection in November as Governor of New Jersey until now.