New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie wasted little time going after his Republican rivals on the campaign trail in Iowa on Monday. With two weeks to go until the Iowa caucus, Christie is taking direct aim at Florida Sen. Marco Rubio.
Christie told the Council Bluffs crowd he likes Rubio, “but heck man, he’s not ready.”
“We certainly don’t need to send a first-term senator again to the Oval Office, do we?” Christie asked the crowd. “Just because you philosophically agree with someone more doesn’t make them any more prepared to do the job. We need someone who’s ready on the first day to sit in that chair and not spin around and say, ‘Gee whiz, isn’t it cool I’m president?’ All right? Big, wide eyes. ‘Look at me. Hey mom, I became president.’ We need someone who sits in the chair the first day and says this chair feels familiar. It’s not the same as the chair I sat in before, but it’s like it.”
Christie continued to argue that serving in the U.S. Senate is “like being in school … they tell you where to go, what time to show up, they tell you where to sit, they give you a list of questions and you answer them yes or no, then they tell you when recess is and you get to leave.”
The Rubio campaign responded in a statement slamming Christie’s record.
“Chris Christie can certainly talk, but nothing he does can cover-up his liberal record in New Jersey of supporting Common Core, gun control and Obama’s pick of liberal Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court,” said Jahan Wilcox, Rubio spokesman, in an email. “For someone who likes to tell it like it is, there’s no covering up that Governor Christie has fiercely supported a liberal agenda in New Jersey.”
The New Jersey governor also swiped at Texas Sen. Ted Cruz in an interview with Time published on Monday morning. Christie called the senator “asinine” for his criticism of New York values, and said Cruz was the “most inside guy in this race” despite his rants against the “Washington cartel.”
Christie’s campaign has largely focused on New Hampshire as crucial to his presidential campaign’s future success, but his loud attacks in the Hawkeye State suggest he has not yet written off Iowa either. He ranks fourth in the Washington Examiner‘s newest GOP presidential power rankings released after Thursday’s presidential debate.
