Chris Christie appeared on four of the five Sunday morning television talk shows to celebrate his re-election as governor of New Jersey and not, repeat, not, his candidacy for president. True enough, he'd just pulled off a near miracle, winning women, immigrants, seniors, millennials, baby boomers, independents and vegans in a very blue state.





Paul's behavior after being hit with accusations of plagiarism suggests he's not ready for prime time. It wasn't just the cribbing — though that got him relieved of his column in the conservative Washington Times — as much as his reaction to it. He went through the four stages of political grief, ending with the unfortunate standby that mistakes were made, but stopped short of acknowledging he was the one who made them.


Paul, however, let the accusation get under his thin skin without exactly refuting it. If it were legal, he said, he'd challenge his accusers to a duel. That was colorful enough to ensure an extra day of coverage. After accusations surfaced that he had also borrowed without attribution from publications put out by the Heritage Foundation and the Cato Institute, Paul came up with the excuse of: what's a busy man to do but to rely on staff for "facts and anecdotes."

As the drip, drip, drip continued, he snapped that he didn't care anymore and would be perfectly happy packing up his medical bag and returning to the practice of medicine in Kentucky.


Cruz, however, has skin that is so thick it's impermeable. He welcomes any pretext for a fight, even with his colleagues. He boasts that he didn't come to Washington to make 99 new friends in the Senate and in that he's succeeded. To show he doesn't care, he proudly displays in his office a hat emblazoned "wacko bird," a name bestowed upon him by Senator John McCain, who didn't mean it as a compliment.

The Texas senator is so combative he might plagiarize someone else's work just to show Paul how a real man would brush it off like a piece of lint.


At the end of the week, Paul lashed out in, of all places, a Senate hearing, as if to show that the race was between him and Christie. He accused "somebody running for political office" (Christie) of spending $25 million on ads to bring tourists back to areas hit by Hurricane Sandy, which happened to be New Jersey. "I'm thinking there might be a conflict of interest there."

It was pretty lame, and certainly not enough to deflect attention from copygate. He expressed fear that he was going to be in detention forever for "sins of omission." He might take comfort that he's reached the last stage of scandal and has become joke fodder. On the "Daily Show," Jon Stewart said it had become "increasingly clear that Mr. Paul has stolen his haircut from '80s icon Patrick Duffy."

Christie may sit back and watch Cruz and Paul take each other out, or hope that the one who remains standing is Paul. Unlike Cruz, he doesn't know how to take a punch or throw one.