Joseph McQuaid, publisher of the influential New Hampshire Union Leader, endorsed the New Jersey governor on Saturday night, saying Christie was the right candidate for “our safety” and “our future.” The endorsement is evidence that Christie’s heavy focus on the Granite State and his pivot to talking about 9/11 in the wake of the Paris attacks have paid off.
The Union Leader then proceeded to dismiss the rest of the field in the most allusive terms, singling out a certain “fast-talking, well-meaning freshman U.S. senator” (Rubio? Cruz?), a “well-meaning person from the private sector who has no public experience” (Carson? Fiorina?), those who don’t have “a strong set of conservative values” (Bush? Kasich?), and candidates who “have gained public and media attention by speaking bluntly” but who don’t “actually know what they are talking about” (Trump, but really could be almost anyone in the GOP primary).
We’re waiting to see if the jilted candidates criticize a certain paper that gave its coveted endorsement to Newt Gingrich in 2012.