Christie’s frank talk may make GOP squirm

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I’m completely on board with this year’s trend of frank truth-telling by Republican presidential candidates, because let’s face it, it’s always better to know beforehand just how [choose one] obnoxious, dangerous or crazy they are.

But maybe we ought to set some limits.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie would seem to have exceeded those limits on Tuesday when he told a breakfast crowd in Manchester, New Hampshire, that he has “used birth control, and not just the rhythm method.”

That must have made the pancakes tough to swallow for those New Englanders, even with a generous helping of good Vermont maple syrup.

Happily, Christie did not go into any details about his preferred methods of birth control, although the campaign season is young and follow-up questions are bound to follow.

Is the Jersey boy a Trojan kind of guy, or has he gone with a full-fledged vasectomy?

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I’d rather not know, but the lawyers refer to this in court as “opening the door,” meaning that “I would never have brought it up, but you did first.”

My best guess is that when Christie said he had used birth control, what he really meant is that his wife had used birth control — with his permission, of course, which is still required under the Republican Party platform last time I looked.

You can see where this type of personal revelation could get out of control in a hurry on the campaign trail if allowed to go unchecked.

Donald Trump, who staked out this Telling It Like It Is turf by insulting Mexicans before Christie even finished memorizing his excuses for Bridgegate, might feel compelled to one-up the New Jersey governor.

Trump, who does seem to have an instinct for misdirection, might decide to tell America about all the women with whom he’s had unprotected sex, so much the better to prove his macho instincts.

I don’t want you to think I’m just picking on the Republicans. If the sex lives of candidates catch on as campaign fodder, this could spill over to the Democratic ticket as well, where it could get equally as ugly.

Might Hillary Clinton end up feeling the need to reveal exactly how long it has been since she slept with Bill?

And does Bernie Sanders use Viagra, or is he more of a Cialis kind of guy?

My biggest fears about candidates getting too personal doesn’t even involve their sex lives, rather their hair.

My worst nightmare is that Trump, drawing on his reality TV experiences, finally will come clean about just exactly what he does to get his hair to do that. Plugs? Comb-over? Swarming robots?

I could see an in-depth video, or even worse, an infomercial inviting us to buy the video with the proceeds going to support his presidential campaign.

As insatiable as our curiosity is about presidential candidates, Christie proved there really is such a thing as too much information, which is not a comment on his weight. As far as I’m concerned, size doesn’t matter in presidential hopefuls. I don’t want to hear Marco Rubio or Barack Obama talking about the rhythm method either.

Christie supporters would no doubt want me to point out the context of his remarks. He seemed to be trying to make a point about the role of religion in politics and the need to keep some separation.

“We should all acquit ourselves in a way that we believe is consistent with the teachings that we follow, if we follow certain teachings from a religious perspective,” Christie said, according to an account by Politico. “That’s what I’ll always continue to try to do. Me for instance, I’m a Catholic, but I’ve used birth control, and not just the rhythm method, ok. So, you know, my church has a teaching against birth control. Does that make me an awful Catholic because I believed and practiced that function during part of my life? I don’t think so.”

After Thursday’s debate, I’m sure many Republicans are hoping some of their party hopefuls will practice another time-honored method of holding down the population.

That would be the withdrawal method.

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