Forget his personality. Those pesky voters ultimately want to know what you are planning to do in that public office to alleviate their perennial misery. In this sense, Christie's conservative message is the right kind at the right time: fiscal.
Christie jumped on each news story, using it as further evidence that the legislature couldn't be trusted with taxpayer's money. With no one trying to defend the indefensible, Christie's had an appreciative audience to himself.
NPR and Jon Stewart's Daily Show came out on top as the most informative, making the schadenfreude all the more delicious for Fox-haters, and the twisting of the liberal knife-in-the-back all the more painful for Fox fans. But how did it come to that?