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MSNBC's Melissa-Harris Perry gave New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie a well needed break from the typical fawning we've seen over him and his high approval ratings in the wake of Hurricane Sandy -- and a dose of reality of what he's in for when voters start taking a closer look at his record if he throws his hat in there for the 2016 presidential primary race.

Pump your brakes, Gov. Christie:

Long after images of Hurricane Sandy’s devastation vanished from our television screens, one very visible–and very vocal–reminder has made it impossible to ignore the ongoing struggles of Sandy’s victims: New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.

His advocacy for New Jersey’s recovery effort has extended his 15 minutes of national fame far beyond his speech at the Republican National Convention. In fact, his popularity may even have him thinking he can stretch that 15 minutes all the way to the White House in 2016.

But let’s not get too hasty. Because in my open letter this week, I’d like to remind the governor of a few things that may make him–and American voters–want to think twice.

Dear Gov. Christie,

It’s me, Melissa. Well, there’s no denying it–you are definitely having a moment. Since last year when you put partisan politics aside to praise President Obama’s disaster response to the recent kick in the pants you gave House Speaker John Boehner, it seems you’ve become the voice of America’s frustration with Washington. And as a resident of a city that knows all too well what it means to rebuild in the wake of catastrophe, I know the people of New Jersey are grateful to have you as a champion.

You can tell by your 73% approval rating. And even more impressive, as a Republican governor of a blue state, you’ve managed to get 62% approval among Democrats, 70% among women, and 69% among people of color. That makes you almost a shoo-in for re-election this year. No doubt all that love has got you feeling like it’s all aboard the Christie train–next stop, the White House!

But not so fast. I’m going to need you to pump your brakes.

Your ability to lead people through the aftermath of a disaster does not qualify you to be president of the United States. Just ask Rudy Giuliani.

Oh, that Time Magazine cover line certainly had it right–you are the master of disaster. It’s just that the disaster struck long before Hurricane Sandy came ashore. Let’s hope you do a better job presiding over the state’s storm recovery than you’ve done presiding over New Jersey’s economic recovery. Because New Jersey’s economic performance ranked 47th in the nation in 2011. And right now, the [New Jersey] unemployment rate is 9.6%–surpassing the national rate by almost 2%.

It seems, governor, that residents are still waiting on that so-called “Jersey Comeback” you claimed had already begun.

And so much for your reputation for telling the hard truths–or telling the truth at all. When you ran for governor, you promised not to cut pensions, property tax rebates, or education spending. When you became governor, you promptly cut all three. Oh, and there’s also the matter of those other cuts you proposed–the tax cuts for New Jersey’s wealthiest residents. You even went so far as to veto–not once, not twice, but three times–a tax increase on millionaires.

Given your policy preferences for the wealthy, is it any wonder that it took a natural disaster and some convincing from President Obama before you could get some reciprocation in your love for Bruce Springsteen? You know his every lyric, so you also know that The Boss–I mean the real Boss–in his songs celebrates the working class. The same folks who suffer when you refuse to raise the state’s minimum wage or when you cut the earned income tax credit for low-income residents, or cut $7.4 million from reproductive health care services.

Thanks to you, the women of New Jersey now have six fewer family planning clinics. Those that remain saw 26,000 fewer patients after your budget cuts. That’s fewer breast exams, fewer cancer screenings – fewer lives that could be saved with preventative care. So yes, by all means, enjoy your moment. You’ve earned it.

But thanks to your policy record you’ve also earned what’s coming to you in 2016–and I have a feeling America’s voters are going to give you exactly what you deserve.

Sincerely,

Melissa

Check out the link above for Melissa's panel discussion on the Governor's record.

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Ah yes... Ronald Reagan... that great man of the working people and the American middle class... or at least he was in the alternative reality that is called Peggy Noonan's brain. After her predictions of "Romney rising" in the polls and that the enthusiasm factor would "carry the day" for his big win, Noonan was asked by This Week host George Stephanopoulos about the fact that the presidential election wasn't even close.

Noonan gave the audience a big dose of revisionist history on Reagan. And like most Republicans since Romney lost the election, seems to believe that Republicans don't really need to do anything differently. They just need to work on their messaging. I hate to break it to you Peggy, but it's not just the rhetoric. It's your policies. And they haven't gotten any better since Reagan did his best to help destroy our middle class.

It does seem impossible for Nooners to have a conversation about anything, without dragging out St. Ronnie's corpse to worship. It's pretty humorous given the fact that their party is so far off the cliff these days that he wouldn't make it through a GOP primary race right now.

STEPHANOPOULOS: And, Peggy Noonan, one of the things they're going to have to absorb is one of the points you've made is that this election in the end actually wasn't all that close, President Obama, 330 electoral votes. They're still counting the popular vote...

NOONAN: Yes, they are.

STEPHANOPOULOS: ... but he's above the -- he has more than a 3 percent lead over Mitt Romney right now.

NOONAN: Yeah. I think -- I mean, from the beginning, it struck me as this is not just the re-election of a president. This is the rebuffing, if that's the right word, of the Republicans.

Look, I think there are many lessons to be learned over this election. There was a not ideal candidate. It was a not ideal campaign, et cetera, et cetera. But, yes, America is -- in America, something's always being born. It's always changing. Demographically it's changing. At the end of the day, elections are actually about ideas. They're about the stands each party takes.

The Republicans do have to sit down and say, what are we doing? And as important, how are we doing it?

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As our friends over at Show Me Progress noted this Tuesday evening, Claire, you must be living right. Regardless of what the polls show right now, I don't think Rep. Todd Akin's primary win in Missouri to face off against incumbent Sen. Clair McCaskill is good news for Republicans in the Show Me state. He's a wingnut of the first order and hopefully is not going to be very attractive to general election voters once they start to get a better look at him.

Back in 2009, we shared this lovely video of the Representative, making jokes about lynching his Democratic colleagues, which you can watch above. It was apparently a big hit with his constituents in his district, but he's going to have to appeal to voters all across the state now, and I'm sure there are a good deal of us besides myself that don't find lynching jokes particularly funny.

In August of last year, Akin refused to meet with his constituents to defend his vote to eliminate Medicare which you can watch the video of here: Rep. Todd Akin Refuses to Meet With Constituents and Defend Vote to Eliminate Medicare.

And we got a reminder on primary night from some local bloggers as to why Akin is going to have some trouble come the general election as well. From MO_Snark: The One reason Todd akin will lose to Claire McCaskill:

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Here we go again with more birthers coming out of the woodwork making embarrassments of themselves. CNN's Anderson Cooper spoke to one of them this Monday evening, but here's some background first from Think Progress.

North Carolina Republicans Go Birther: Certificate Is A ‘Poorly Reproduced Forgery’:

North Carolina is apparently ground zero of the latest resurgence of the birther movement, as a number of Republican candidates in the state are expressing doubts about President Obama’s birthplace.

ThinkProgress has previously noted that Richard Hudson, running for a congressional seat in the state’s 8th district, said Obama is “hiding something on his citizenship,” while the Charlotte Observer rescinded its endorsement of Jim Pendergraph, running in the 9th district, after he expressed his own doubts about Obama’s birth certificate.

Now, the Observer reports that Dr. John Whitley, one of Hudson’s opponents in tomorrow’s GOP primary, has also gone birther. He declared Obama’s birth certificate a “poorly reproduced forgery” after comparing it to the Hawaiian birth certificate of one of his campaign workers. “There is a tremendous amount of smoke here,” Whitley said. “In fact, it’s called a smoke screen.”

In the interview above, Anderson Cooper just simply asked Whitley for what proof he had that the birth certificate was a forgery and allowed Whitley to spin himself into looking completely ridiculous. Whitley's proof that the birth certificate was a forgery? Wingnut Sheriff Joe Arpaio's "investigation" that we wrote about here: Arpaio Probe Offers Boilerplate Birtherism in Dramatic Presser.

When asked who any of Arpaio's so-called experts were that he was relying on, Whitley couldn't name them. When asked how he knew his friend's birth certificate was legitimate, his answer was basically that he'd looked at it himself, even though he concurred that he was not an expert on evaluating documents and records.

I really wish these yahoos would get called out for exactly what they're doing in one of these interviews, which is race baiting. Sadly I guess this still goes over well in Republican primaries in North Carolina, since we've got so many of them playing this ugly game. Shameful.

(Note on the video clip above. The CNN broadcast had problems with their video hanging up during a portion of the interview, but the audio continued to work, so it's not a problem with our servers or your computer.)

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Lawrence O'Donnell took a look back at the presidential campaign of Newt Gingrich during his Rewrite segment now that he's finally going to officially drop out of the race and noted that "Newt is now the first, and no doubt the last historian to refer to the Gingrich presidential campaign as 'a terrific campaign.'"

I guess this means Gingrich is going to quit bilking the taxpayers out of their money to pay for his Secret Service protection. He'll have to finish his book tour without it.

Gingrich Releases Thank-You Video:

The latest in Newt Gingrich’s drawn-out exit from the Republican presidential primary is a goodbye video titled, “Thank You To All Of Our Supporters.” Though news that Gingrich will drop out of the race is almost a week old, Gingrich says in the video that he wants to give his supporters “insider advance notice” that he will be suspending his campaign on Wednesday.

Gingrich calls his suporters “vital” and tells them, “we’re going to continue out there on the road, both Callista and I will be talking, campaigning, making speeches, doing everything we can to help defeat Barack Obama.”

Gingrich will officially announce the suspension of his campaign Wednesday in Virginia.

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From the man whose policies are what amounts to "the Robin Hood story — only in reverse" for the poor, a man whose time at Bain represents everything most Americans hate about capitalism, we had him trying to "pivot" for the general election tonight with a message against government"unfairness" after this Tuesday evening's primary wins.

Mitt Romney Kicks Off The General With Crusade Against ‘Unfairness’:

Finally able to acknowledge what’s been plain for weeks, Mitt Romney seized the mantle of his party’s presumptive nominee after winning a series of primaries in the Northeast Tuesday night. Billed as one of his first major general election speeches, Romney pledged to combat government “unfairness” and challenge President Obama with a relentless focus on the economy.

“Tonight I can say, ‘Thank you, America,’” Romney told supporters in New Hampshire. “After 43 primaries and caucuses, many long days and more than a few long nights, I can say with confidence and gratitude that you have given me a great honor and solemn responsibility. And, together, we will win on Nov. 6.”

Romney warned that “because [Obama] has failed, he will run a campaign of diversions, distractions, and distortions.”

“That kind of campaign may have worked at another place and in a different time,” he said. “But not here and not now. It’s still about the economy — and we’re not stupid.”

Romney outlined an agenda aimed at combating what he called “unfairness” in government, spinning a phrase often employed by Democrats as they make the case that wealthier Americans and corporations should pay higher taxes. Earlier Tuesday, Obama said the rich should “pay their fair share” in a speech to college students in North Carolina. While other Republicans often debate these arguments by emphasizing “opportunity,” Romney adopted the “fairness” language to criticize federal spending.

As TPM noted, Romney was still attempting to run on his father's resume:

“I’ll tell you about how much I love this country, where someone like my dad, who grew up poor and never graduated from college, could pursue his dreams and work his way up to running a great car company,” Romney. “Only in America could a man like my dad become governor of the state in which he once sold paint from the trunk of his car.”

More there with the Obama campaign's response to the speech. Text of the portion of Romney's speech in the video above below the fold.

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Looks like someone is still playing coy to placate the wingnuts who might vote for her in her House district that really don't like Mitt Romney. I'm quite sure Michele Bachmann is more than aware that Mitt Romney is going to be the Republican nominee for president.

GREGORY: Are you fully behind Mitt Romney for president at this point?

BACHMANN: Well, I'm very seriously looking into an endorsement for Mitt Romney. As you know, Rick Santorum just got out of the race this week. I think we're seeing a uniting and a pulling together around our eventual nominee and I have said that I want my voice to be one of uniting our party; the independents, the main stream, the conservatives, evangelicals, the tea party movement. I want to unite our party and so I'm waiting for our party to come together and help in that process.

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With Rick Santorum out of the Republican primary race and Mitt Romney now the presumptive nominee, Chris Hayes discussed the conventional wisdom that Romney will now inevitably attempt to "pivot" back to the middle and soften some of the very extreme positions he's taken while trying to get through their primary race. Hayes played a series of clips both from President Obama and Romney. He reminded us of some of Obama's broken campaign promises and followed up with some of the things Mitt Romney's said on the campaign trail.

Hayes has a point: it doesn't matter much what Romney says once he attempts to moderate some of the things he's said in those clips because today's Republican Party is not going to allow him to govern as a moderate.

HAYES: The President is a product of the party that nominates him and the party that will nominate Mitt Romney is unwaveringly committed to a singularly regressive agenda. No post election private reversion to the moderate meme will change that. So, as we enter the era of the pivot, don't listen to what Mitt Romney says. Look at what his party is doing.

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The Daily Show's Jon Stewart took a shot at Republican presidential frontrunner Mitt Romney and the series of tepid endorsements he's received so far from everyone from John McCain, to George H. W. Bush, to Marco Rubio to Paul Ryan to his own wife Ann and her comment about "unzipping" her husband.

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Former governors Howard Dean and Haley Barbour appeared on Fox News Sunday for what host Chris Wallace described as preview for what a debate in the general election between President Obama and Mitt Romney might look like. Amazingly the subject of Barbour's lobby shop being linked to Iranian nuclear efforts didn't come up during the segment. Imagine that.

For his part, Howard Dean did a fairly good job of explaining towards the end of the segment just what kind of trouble Mitt Romney is going to have during the general election, given the fact that's he's rightfully perceived as out of touch with everyday Americans and only cares about helping the 1 percent, of which he's a member.

Republicans keep pretending this long primary season was somehow good for Mitt Romney, but without is we wouldn't have the list of gaffs Dean was able to rattle off here. The more the man talks, the more he continues to stick his foot in his mouth.

Transcript below the fold.

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