To those of you who dislike Politico, you have to admit no one else has the resources or “win the morning” determination to scout out all the reactions for Republican presidential candidates to the Iranian nuclear deal, as Nick Gass and Adam Lerner did today.
Not a one of them said “I need to read the thing before reacting to it.” If reporters cannot run Rand Paul to ground to get his reaction very soon, maybe he’ll flunk the gut test by saying he needs to reflect on it before joining the party-wide freakout.
Meanwhile, Graham, Santorum, Walker, Bush, Perry, Cruz, Trump, Fiorina and Rubio all denounced the agreement and suggested they would abrogate it instantly. Huck and Jindal pre-denounced it.
Earlier this month Chris Christie really singled himself out by saying:
“I’m not one of those guys who’s going to say to you, ‘On Day One, I will abrogate the agreement,’” New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said earlier this month at a gathering of New Hampshire Republicans. “Because, by the way, it’s not just us involved anymore. We have a number of our allies around the world who’re at that table as well, and sanctions are most effective when not only we do it, but the other allies do it.”
That was then. This is now:
[O]n Tuesday, Christie blasted the announcement, calling it the culmination of “two years of humiliating concessions by President Obama” and urging Congress to vote in numbers that would override any presidential veto.
We haven’t heard from John Kasich, George Pataki or Jim Gilmore just yet.
And just now I kept thinking “Okay: who have I left out?” But it really doesn’t matter, does it? Other than as a reminder that every time the Obama administration does much of anything the next few months, we’ll have to go to Politico to figure out who said what.
