Chris Christie rips 'ill-prepared' Obama

In an address before a gathering of Kentucky Republicans this weekend, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie turned up the heat on President Obama, criticizing the commander in chief for "posing and preening" instead of working to resolve important issues facing the country.

“He is the most ill-prepared person to assume the presidency in my lifetime,” Christie told the crowd. “This is a guy who literally is walking around in a dark room trying to find the light switch of leadership.  He doesn't even know where it is, let alone how to operate it.”  BURN.

With Mitt Romney the presumptive GOP challenger this November, Christie focused his remarks entirely on the general election and received a standing ovation for his critique of Obama's first term.

“He has sat in the Oval Office and cared more about posing and preening and making partisan politics the rule of the day in Washington D.C. than he’s cared about progress,” the governor said. “Now listen,” he continued, “this country’s problems are too serious, too serious, to spend another day with a bystander in the oval office.”

He went on:

Obama is "embarking upon a strategy for re-election that pits one American against another, that tells American people who have been successful in life that somehow they should apologize for that success, that tells our middle class and our lower middle class that the economic pie in America has stopped growing, and the only way for them to get more is to take some from others who have already made economic growth happen."

"This president is killing the entrepreneurial spirit in this country," Christie added. "His strategy for re-election is the most divisive, depressing strategy that I've ever seen. It's not leadership, Mr. President. It is a cynical strategy for re-election. I believe the American people will reject your cynicism and send you back to Chicago."

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, who invited Christie to Kentucky, reportedly called him “the perfect conservative messenger to inspire and energize Kentuckians."