After New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie chewed out a protester at an event this week, Sen. Rand Paul said voters might be turned off by that “bully demeanor.”
Christie, heckled by a protestor at an event this week, told the man to “sit down and shut up” in an exchange caught on tape.
That response, Paul said, might not sit well with some Americans.
“I think this sort of bully demeanor may go over well in certain places, but I can’t imagine that — I grew up in the South, and we’re … a little bit more polite,” Paul, a Kentucky Republican, said on CBS’s “Face The Nation.” “I think they want someone to be bold, and there was a time when I thought, ‘You know what? When he stands up and says things boldly, that’s good, he’s not taking any flak.’ But there can be too much of that, too.”
Instead, Paul said, he senses there is a “resurgence of people who want a little more civility in discourse.”
Paul and Christie could put their divergent styles to the test if they face off in 2016 in a Republican presidential primary.
