Chris Christie has a problem:

A series of newly obtained emails and text messages shows that Gov. Chris Christie’s office was closely involved with lane closings on the New Jersey side of the George Washington Bridge in September, and that officials closed the lanes as retribution against the Democratic mayor whose town was gridlocked as a result.

It doesn’t really come as a surprise that Christie and his aides and appointees would do something like this, but the sheer pettiness of the act is still quite remarkable. Christie gained nothing from this except to indulge in spiting a supporter of his rival, and he did so at the expense of many other people who were simply trying to go about their own business. It reflects very poorly on Christie. It tells us a fair amount about the kind of people he surrounds himself with and the sort of conduct he expects from them, and none of it is good.

The pathetic thing about all this is that it will probably have little or no effect on Christie’s presidential ambitions. Many people are already declaring that this marks the demise of a future Christie campaign, but I have a feeling that the story will be received very differently inside the GOP than it is by everyone else. It will probably be treated as a political “hit” by hostile media, and partisans will begin dutifully repeating claims that the story isn’t that important, or that it’s old news, or that it is irrelevant to the state/country’s real problems. That seems likely because that is what partisans usually do when one of their party’s stars is accused of some wrongdoing.