Chris Christie's Bernie Madoff problem

I hadn't heard this, but maybe it explains a few things:

In their ever-widening search for somebody who is not Mitt Romney, conservatives are now souring on Rick Perry and turning their desperate, flailing hopes toward Chris Christie. For his part, Christie says he's not running (but Republicans note that he keeps acting the part).

But should the New Jersey governor decide to dive into the shallow end that is the GOP nomination race, here's a lesser known part of his past that might doom him in the general election. ...

Before he was flying in state helicopters to his kid's baseball games, Christie was flying on private jets as part of the law firm Dughi, Hewit & Palatucci, for whom, as a lobbyist, the future governor fought for the rights of Wall Street. In fact, one of Christie's primary lobbying projects on behalf of Wall Street was to win an exemption for securities fraud from New Jersey's Consumer Fraud Act. For those Americans whose 401(k)s have been gouged in the last few years, that won't play well. (The only reason this wasn't much of an issue in his gubernatorial campaign was because his opponent was Jon Corzine, who sucked off Wall Street's teat with even more gusto than Christie.)

But it gets worse for Christie.

In a detail that practically writes its own commercial script, the Wall Street client on whose behalf Christie lobbied was the Securities Industry Association. Which, at that time, was led by one Mr. Bernard Madoff.

The bottom line for Obama's communication team: As a lobbyist, Chris Christie worked to remove securities fraud from a consumer fraud act on behalf of an organization run by Bernie Madoff.

Of course, you never want to underestimate the Democrats' ability to shoot themselves in the foot. But this might explain why Christie seems to be busy running for president in 2016, not 2012.

By then, given our pathetically poor memories, we Americans will have forgotten all about Bernie Madoff and pretty much everything else that's happened to date.

After all, we've clearly forgotten the Bush administration already (else, why would anyone even consider voting for a Republican these days, especially given the fact that they're peddling the same policies that failed so dramatically just a few short years ago).