My new post today at WHYY’s Newsworks looks at the reemergence this past week of enmity between Chris Christie and NJEA, NJ’s primary teacher union. What’s up with that?

For Chris Christie and NJEA, N.J.’s primary teacher union, it’s deja vu all over again. After several years of a relatively decorous detente, we’re back to the rude fisticuffs and catcalls of 2010 and 2011, and all within a matter of days. What’s behind this political and behavioral regression?

Christie’s strategy is clear. In order to secure the 2016 Republican nomination for president, he has to confirm his conservative bona fides. Thus, this week he vetoed a gun control bill that he supported last year and endorsed Tea Party nut Steve Lonegan for U.S. Senate.

Christie’s attack on N.J.’s primary teacher union NJEA last week in Boston, then, was just one more genuflection to the Ron Pauls and Rick Santorums of the GOP. During a speech to the Republican National Committee (supposedly closed to the press but leaked to a Politico reporter) Christie described NJEA’s resistance…

Read the rest here.