The NYT reports on how furious various members of the GOP and the Romney campaign are at NJ Governor Chris Christie for putting his state ahead of his party in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy:
Inside the Romney campaign, there is little doubt that Mr. Christie's expressions of admiration for the president, coupled with ubiquitous news coverage of the hurricane's aftermath, raised Mr. Obama's standing at a crucial moment.
During a lengthy autopsy of their campaign, Mr. Romney's political advisers pored over data showing that an unusually large number of voters who remained undecided until the end of the campaign backed Mr. Obama. Many of them cited the storm as a major factor in their decision, according to a person involved in the discussion.
“Christie,” a Romney adviser said, “allowed Obama to be president, not a politician.”
In a sign of residual frustration, a banner headline popped up on Sunday on a Romney-friendly Web site, The Drudge Report, going after Mr. Christie for appearing on “Saturday Night Live” this past weekend “as residents suffer.”
Then of course, there are all the other reasons Romney lost:
Mr. Christie is, of course, a convenient scapegoat for a candidacy that fell short for many reasons — demographic, ideological and personal — and Mr. Romney's campaign manager, Matt Rhoades, emphasized that Mr. Christie did “exactly what a governor should do” in a crisis.
