I tacked this clip onto last night’s QOTD but figured Christie-haters would enjoy seeing it get some extra attention. Everyone knows the history between these two, yes? Quote:

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) declined an invitation to go to Virginia and campaign on behalf of Republican gubernatorial candidate Ken Cuccinelli, according to MSNBC’s Chuck Todd.

Citing an unnamed Republican source, Todd said on-air Tuesday night that “some senior conservative Republicans” asked Christie to campaign for Cuccinelli, but the re-elected New Jersey governor passed.

Cuccinelli was bested by Democrat Terry McAuliffe on [election day], although the margin was smaller than many observers expected.

The report calls to mind Christie’s decision to decline an invitation to campaign in Pennsylvania for Mitt Romney days after Hurricane Sandy battered New Jersey.

Since Cooch is, I believe, the only semi-prominent Republican in the country who’s calling for Christie to step down, I’m going to go ahead and treat the story about Christie snubbing him on the trail as now confirmed. Needless to say, though, unless and until Jersey Dems tie Christie to Bridgegate directly, there’s not a whisper of a chance of it happening. Resigning as head of the RGA would be a tacit admission that this scandal is a Very Big Deal and that Christie’s so tainted by it that he can no longer be effective as a fundraiser. Once he admits that, he’s done in 2016. So he’ll press on and hope it either goes away or turns him into some sort of martyr of lefty media to Republican audiences. That’s the way GOP pols are betting: When Myra Adams asked two Republican strategists whether he should quit the group, they told her “Hell no” and “Outside of the liberal media, this Christie ‘scandal’ has no legs.” Christie had been scheduled to fundraise last weekend with Rick Scott in Florida before Bridgegate broke, and while Scott’s team reportedly debated whether to rescind the invite, they ultimately went ahead with the event, calculating apparently that a charismatic northeastern governor was still an asset on balance with wealthy Floridians even post-scandal. The only tweak to the Christie/Scott meeting, as far as I know, was that details were kept more secretive than usual — although, if you believe one of Scott’s donor, that was at Christie’s behest, not Scott’s. Maybe the big guy just didn’t want to be inundated with media asking about Bridgegate when he’s busy trying to demonstrate his cachet to swing-state voters.

I’m surprised, actually, that tea partiers haven’t made a bigger deal about urging Christie to resign from the RGA. If you want to brand him permanently as damaged goods before 2016, forcing him to shed his role as a party standard-bearer is the way to do it. How can you qualify to be your party’s nominee if you can’t qualify to head the RGA?