Senator Marco Rubio criticized Chris Christie, one of his rivals for the Republican nomination, for doing “a number of things that are very similar to the Obama agenda.”
Appearing on the Fox Business Network Thursday afternoon, Rubio was asked to respond to Christie’s statement that the Florida senator was trying to “slime his way” to the presidency after a super PAC supporting Rubio ran an anti-Christie ad. Rubio said the claims in the ad were “100 percent accurate.”
“The fact of the matter is, Chris Christie has supported Common Core and, in fact, as badmouthed Republicans that oppose it,” Rubio said. “Chris Christie has supported gun control. Chris Christie supported an assault-weapons ban. It’s the reason why he got into politics to begin with. Chris Christie personally contributed to Planned Parenthood.”
“I just don’t think this country can afford to elect a president that will not stand up and undo the damage Barack Obama has done to this country,” Rubio continued. “This is an issue-based disagreement. It’s not personal.”
THE WEEKLY STANDARD has requested a comment from the Christie campaign.
What about Rubio’s claims? As governor of New Jersey, Christie implemented Common Core education standards, saying in 2013 it was “one of those areas where I have agreed more with the president than not.” But last May, shortly before announcing his bid for president, Christie said Common Core was “not working” in New Jersey.
“We must reject federal control of our education and return it to parents and teachers,” Christie said last year. “We need to take it out of the cubicles of Washington, D.C. where it was placed by the Obama administration and return it to the neighborhoods of New Jersey.”
On gun control, Rubio’s claim is correct but also complicated. In an interview with Fox News’s Bret Baier this past fall, Christie denied that gun-control was a motivating factor for his decision to enter politics. When Baier confronted Christie with a 1993 quote in the Newark Star-Ledger in which the future governor said the assault-weapons ban issue “energized” him to run for public office, Christie said he could not remember saying that. On Wednesday the Republican governor admitted he was for the assault-weapons ban but that he “changed his mind” on the issue after serving as a federal prosecutor.
A source close to the Christie campaign points out that Rubio’s own record on guns has not been entirely pure. In 2009, for example, Rubio said he supported “reasonable restrictions” on guns, including background checks, while he was running for Senate.
Finally, regarding Planned Parenthood, it’s unclear whether Christie did personally donate to the organization in the early 1990’s, though he did fashion himself as a pro-choice Republican. But Christie says he changed his mind on abortion after he heard the heartbeat of his unborn daughter on an ultrasound in 1995. He ran for governor in 2009 as pro-life. And on the presidential campaign trail, Christie often touts his record on vetoing state funding for Planned Parenthood every year since he took office. He’s also gone hard after Hillary Clinton for her defense of the nation’s largest abortion provider, calling it “garbage.”
The acrimony between Rubio and Christie has grown over the last several days as both vie to place well or even win in New Hampshire, a critical state for both candidates’ presidential bids. Thursday morning, Christie tweeted out a short video using pop singer Adele’s hit song “Hello” and a fawning quotation from Rubio about Christie’s “conservative leadership” from when the latter was running for reelection in 2013:
Oh @marcorubio, the way things used to be #tbthttps://t.co/28d0wX7sMW
— Chris Christie (@ChrisChristie) January 7, 2016
According to the Real Clear Politics average of New Hampshire polls, Rubio and Christie are within three points of each other and are competing for second place with Ted Cruz, the current leader in Iowa. Donald Trump maintains a solid lead in the Granite State.
Update: Christie spokesperson Samantha Smith provided a statement to TWS. “We know making decisions and actually getting things done is a novel concept for members of Congress who talk a big game without anything to show for it, but it is something Chris Christie has been doing as governor for the last six years,” said Smith. “He’s stood up to a Democratic legislature fighting for conservative principles and gotten results. We’ll debate that conservative record any day of the week.”
