A couple of quick things before I begin–I am not a political analyst. I am not a reporter. I am not a political strategist. I am just an average working-class stiff offering up an opinion about a scandal in New Jersey, (I am not even a resident of New Jersey), that has national political implications. I just want to throw my two cents onto the Interwebs because sometimes the things I think about can’t really be condensed into a tweet. Well, they could be, but it would be a long, annoying series of tweets, and who needs that shit in their timeline?

The other thing I would like to add is that a)I am hungry and b)there are playoff football games on today. So, for both of those extremely important reasons, coupled with the fact that, as I mentioned above, I’m no expert on any of this shit, I expect this essay to be fairly brief.

I’ll try to finish it in less time than it takes Chris Christie to finish an extra large meatlover’s pizza. Which, as you can imagine, means I should be wrapping this thing up fairly soon.

Chris Christie is the governor of New Jersey, and he is in trouble. It was recently discovered that people on his staff deliberately coordinated last September with Port Authority cronies, who happened to be high school buddies with the governor, to shut down key access lanes to the George Washington bridge, which connects New Jersey to Manhattan. This resulted in four days of some of the most hellacious traffic delays in a region of the country that is already intimately familiar with hellacious traffic.

For months, Governor Christie denied that the traffic problems were political retaliation against a political opponent. In fact, on numerous occasions, he mocked people who tried to get to the bottom of the fiasco. I know–hard to believe that Chris Christie mocked people who were trying to do their job, but it’s true. Now, emails have been released by the thousands that show that, at the very least, key members of his senior staff were coordinating this fiasco and showing careless indifference to the people in Northern New Jersey it affected because “they were (Democratic) voters.”

This scandal is picking up steam for two reasons: One, Chris Christie is a larger than life character in the world of politics. He is charismatic and rude and bombastic and he has had a bit of a charmed life in Trenton, New Jersey. He has cashed in on the fact that he is a Republican who is overwhelmingly popular in a predominantly Democratic state.

Which brings us to the second reason this scandal will not go away any time soon: Chris Christie is the frontrunner for the 2016 GOP nomination for President.

All of this matters, not only so much to New Jersey voters who–considering the corrupt string of governors that came before Christie–probably see this scandal as no big deal, but to voters nationally.

This is not just a moment in time for New Jersey politics. This is a huge test for the GOP frontrunner who was supposedly a “moderate” who could work in “bipartisan fashion with his opponents across the aisle to get things done.”

Christie, in other words, was shaping up to be the messiah for the GOP in 2016. He was going to lead his people out of the wilderness and into national political relevancy again. He was tough, charming, combative, smart and pragmatic. That was the story last week, at least. Now, he’s just a petty, vindictive, fat bully who will go to extraordinarily dangerous lengths to make his political opponents suffer for daring to stand up to him.

I can tell you who is loving this right now: Rand Paul.

Because, for those of you that don’t know, Rand has kind of been stylized as the frontrunner wannabe, searching for the beam of the national spotlight behind the extremely large shadow that Christie cast. He certainly must feel like his political fortunes have changed. I wouldn’t be surprised if, in the upcoming weeks, we hear the junior senator from Kentucky waxing wise and philosophical about a number of key issues on which the GOP is hopelessly backwards–immigration reform and the minimum wage being two that I can think of right off the top of my starving head.

But, make no mistake about it, the staid, moneyed, powerful people that really keep the Republican Party funded must be shitting their pants right about now. Because without Christie, their “moderate” choice from the northeast to bring independents into the GOP tent, the Republican Party really is left with nothing but a bunch of jingoistic birthers who have only read two books in their lifetimes, the Bible and Atlas Shrugged.

It’s going to be interesting to see how this scandal plays out over the upcoming days and weeks. I am sure that there are dozens of politicians in New Jersey who are lining up to take their shot at this enormous target. There is also the serious question of whether or not federal law was violated in constricting traffic on this bridge that needs to be answered. Irony of ironies, Chris Christie, a former US Attorney, may have to answer to federal prosecutors.

Chris Christie is a big man, with a layer of thick, fatty skin to protect him against the slings and arrows that will be thrown at him in what is turning out to be the political fight of his life, so I’m not counting him out just yet.

Another thing he has to his advantage is that he is beloved by many of the commentators and political analysts that we, the average people, see on television. Those people work with words for a living, and they know how to use them to their advantage. They know how to lessen the blow of something. They know how to paint a picture. So their aid is key for his survival. I can see them acknowledging the mistakes of the Christie administration while at the same time praising the governor for his humility. I can see them helping him to climb out of this mess. They WANT this man to succeed, because they like him. This is already happening on some shows, although most of the talking heads seem cautious enough to wait for more revelations to be disclosed before fully committing their support back to Christie. But, those analysts on television, in print, and on the radio–they could, collectively, help shape public opinion. And if public opinion gets to the point where they think Christie has paid his dues, apologized properly, and has successfully moved on from this debacle, then he may live to battle for that 2016 nomination yet.

Assuming his cholesterol levels don’t kill him first.