A few things for a Monday afternoon:

• I think this ought to refute the notion that Chris Christie seriously damaged himself for a presidential run by being chummy with Obama. Now that tons of Republicans are just dumping on Romney, it would seem that Christie’s mere snubbing of the man is hardly remembered anymore. I’m not much of a fan of his politics but I do think he’s about as smart and sharp as any politician out there in either party, and if he does something that seems like it would hurt him, it’s probably because you haven’t figured out the angle yet. Which, in this case, is simple: Republicans generally do not have much nostalgia for losing presidential candidates. No Republicans sit around thinking wistfully about how much better the late ’90s would have turned out if only Bob Dole had been elected president. Democrats do shit like that all the time–the deaths of George McGovern and Ted Kennedy occasioned endless amounts of “What if?” counterfactuals. But Republicans don’t think that way. Frankly, they tend not to think much of presidents they actually got elected for very long, a function of the party’s ongoing tilt to the right. Christie bet that the howls from the right would be forgotten by ’16, but that the new impressions made in the middle would more than make up for his statesmanlike conduct. He was wrong. The right’ll forget his “offenses” by ’13.
• Good on Pareene for noting the obvious here. My nightmare scenario for 2016 involves Andrew Cuomo winning the Democratic nomination with a big assist from Wall Street cash, then governing somewhere to the right of Bill Clinton. It’s important that the groundwork start getting laid to keep that from happening, and Cuomo’s mishandling of the situation with the New York Senate ought to make it much more difficult to get past a Democratic primary electorate. I simply don’t see how he can go far nationally if there’s doubt that he’s committed to electing Democrats and using power for progressive ends–certainly on the matter of public sector unions and taxes, he’s just a less abrasive Chris Christie.
• Interesting to see Marco Rubio coming on so strong and so soon for presidential buzz by basically endorsing intelligent design. I’ve written about him enough before, but my basic impression is that this guy comes off much more like Evan Bayh or Bill Richardson than Barack Obama, i.e. that on paper, he’s a very formidable candidate, but in America we don’t elect pieces of paper. But if he does win the GOP nomination, it’s worth noting that his resume doesn’t much resemble Mitt Romney’s (accomplished, massive public policy changes) or John McCain’s (many, many years in Washington), but rather it’s awfully close to that of George W. Bush’s (Bush family connections, image/character pushed to the forefront, kinder and gentler take on right-wing ideology). That selection would satisfy the most common definition of insanity, at least.