Christie's Not So Brave Mosque Stand

Last week, the ACLU lauded GOP New Jersey governor Chris Christie for defending the construction of the "ground zero" mosque. But was their praise warranted?

About a week ago, I received a mass email from the ACLU whose subject line read, Governor Christie: A Voice of Reason on Religious Freedom.  Before even opening the email, I knew something was suspect…

The American Civil Liberties Union, the bastion of liberal groupthink, was praising New Jersey’s Republican governor? The same governor who sought previously this year to significantly limit funding to New Jersey public schools and such institutions as Planned Parenthood…? Yep.

The ACLU was lauding Christie, “a national icon among conservatives,” for “boldly [taking] a stand against the xenophobia and mob mentality driving the opposition to a Muslim community center in Manhattan. More than that, he took a stand for religious freedom.”

However, although Christie did discourage fellow GOP-ers from “painting all of Islam with [the brush of radical Muslim extremists]” while promoting a general defense of religious freedom, did he really go so far as to advocate or even defend the construction of the ground-zero mosque, as the ACLU essentially alluded to in their email?

No, he did not make an outright comment in support of the “Islamic Cultural Center.”  All he did, actually, was make a very politically savvy comment in which he essentially said, ‘I’m staying out of this mess.’

I am not going to get into it, because I would be guilty of candidly what I think some Republicans are guilty of, and the president is now, the president is guilty of, of playing politics with this issue, and I simply am not going to do it.

So, while the ACLU claims that Christie took a laudable “stand,” he – in fact – did the exact opposite.  He publicly walked out the back door of the debate, but not before criticizing not only the debate, but also all those engaged in it.