Following a strong reelection victory on Tuesday, Governor Chris Christie (R., N.J.) appeared on four Sunday shows to discuss his win and its significance for the future of the Republican Party.
"What I was saying on Tuesday night and what I’ve been saying all along, is that you can govern with the principles that I have, reforming tenure, cutting budgets … we did all this in a bipartisan way, working across the aisle, getting things done. That’s what people in New Jersey want … and that’s what people across the country, I think, want as well," Christie said on Fox News Sunday.
Christie won with high percentages amongst women and minorities, groups the national GOP has had difficulty winning over.
Critics of the New Jersey Governor have said he is not conservative enough. Most notably, Christie has faced scrutiny for expanding Medicaid, under Obamacare, and some of his stances on immigration.
When it came to the Affordable Care Act, Christie defended his decision to accept the optional Medicaid expansion, but he maintained his dissatisfaction with the law.
"I didn’t do a state-based exchange in New Jersey to implement Obamacare because anyone who’s managed anything or run anything over the course of their careers could see that this was a train wreck. And I was not going to get the people of New Jersey involved in this train wreck in that way," Christie told This Week.
"Expanding Medicaid in the state of New Jersey, given how expansive our program already was, it’s a relatively small expansion, but it’s going to mean a lot. It’s also going to benefit New Jersey’s budget."
Christie told This Week that, when it comes serving the full four years of his second term, "Who knows? I don't know."
News broke this morning that the P5+1 talks with Iran ended without a deal.
Secretary of State John Kerry appeared on Meet the Press to discuss the issue and defend the diplomatic talks.
"I think it's a question of working out the modalities by which [the deal] will be done, by which it can be verified, the ways in which you have a set of guarantees that make absolutely certain that the goal of the president, to make certain that Iran never has a nuclear weapon can be achieved," Kerry said.
"The reporting is that the French thought it wasn't tough enough on the Iranians," host David Gregory said. "As the Israeli prime minister called Rowhani is a wolf in sheep's clothing, that this is what they do. They double play. They play for time while they keep producing, they try to win the confidence of the west and they can play games. Is that what there is fear around the table that they're doing now?"
"No, that is not the fear around the table," Kerry said. "I’d say a number of nations, not just the French, but ourselves and others, wanted to make sure that we had the tough language necessary, the clarity in the language necessary, to be absolutely certain that we were doing the job and not granting more or doing something sloppily that could wind up with a mistake."
"We're not in a rush, we need to get the right deal, no deal is better than a bad deal and we are certainly adhering to that concept," Kerry said.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who was very critical of the anticipated deal, reiterated that stance on CBS’s Face the Nation.
"The easing of the sanctions is a tremendous concession on the part of the P5+1. There’s a multiplier affect, a signaling affect to the markets both inside Iran and the world when you reverse a direction that you've been effectively put in … and now you're going the other way," he said.
"That's like putting a hole in your tire," Netanyahu said. "It may not be a big hole, may be a middle-sized hole or even a small hole, but the air begins come out and pretty soon you’ve got a flat tire. That's what's puncturing the sanctions does. And I think that’s exactly why the Iranians are interested in this deal, because they give nothing but they get the whole in the tire of the sanctions and the air begins to come out. That’s what they want … I hope that the P5+1 understand it, because a bad deal is bad for them too. Ultimately it’s bad for the world."