GOP Assembly Leader Alex DeCroce chose the anniversary of Pearl Harbor to drop a bomb on his caucus. They had assembled last December 7th to hear from Lt. Governor-Elect Kim Guadagno. DeCroce misplaced the script handed to him by the ever present Rick Wright, and mistakenly picked-up a nearby copy of “Horse & Hound”. Reading from it, he said: “Isn’t she the prettiest thing,” or words to that effect. Hilarity failed to ensue. …

He’s the Mr. Magoo of New Jersey politics, a longtime Trenton insider who can’t get through a sentence without notes (word has it that he once read out the contents of his electric bill when Rick Wright mixed it in with a speech).

He’s Alex DeCroce, the Assembly Republican Leader who managed to pick up just one seat in the biggest GOP gubernatorial landslide in 24 years. DeCroce is the guy who wanted to be Jim McGreevey’s Transportation Secretary so badly that he criticized GOP gubernatorial candidate Bret Schundler’s plan to eliminate tolls while endorsing the plan supported by McGreevey and other Democrats.

He loves trains and buses and things like that—miniatures, that is. These are what got him interested in transportation, and from there he became the Chairman of the Transportation Committee back when Republicans had the majority in the Assembly. It also got him into his first major legislative fight — to use taxpayers’ money to build a museum in which to play with trains and buses…