Chris Christie Belly-Flops … er … Dives into the Race
Can somebody explain to me why Chris Christie has decided to launch another failed campaign for president?
This guy had a brief window of popularity in 2011 after he defied expectations and defeated the Barack Obama-endorsed Democrat Tom Kean to become the Governor of New Jersey. And it’s been a downhill slide ever since.
At this point, the only voters eager for a Chris Christie campaign are the Democrats who want the GOP primary to be so crowded that Trump wins the nomination and loses to Biden again in the General.
Among Republican primary voters, Christie is about as popular as head lice.
So why in Lucifer’s reach is this waddling has-been diving into the 2024 primary race?
When launching his campaign at a town hall in New Hampshire yesterday, it was clear that the sole reason Christie is running this quixotic campaign is so he can attack Donald Trump.
According to the Associated Press, Christie described Trump as “a lonely, self-consumed, self-serving mirror hog” who “never admits a mistake” and “never admits fault,” but instead blames others when something goes wrong while taking credit when something goes right.
What? He can’t say things like that from his perch on CNN?
Admittedly Christie’s comments about Trump weren’t wrong. But I don’t understand why you would launch a presidential campaign based solely on singling out and attacking another primary candidate.
Then again, that’s pretty much what Trump is doing, isn’t it?
But Christie explained that he is “going after Trump” for two reasons. Because Trump “deserves it” and because Christie believes that it is “the way to win.”
Win what, exactly, a schoolyard spat between two overweight has-beens?
Now, it’s undeniable that Christie’s pugnacity during the 2016 primary debates helped suck the air out of Marco Rubio’s presidential campaign. But in that instance, Christie was not the beneficiary of his efforts; Donald Trump and Ted Cruz were.
So turning that pugnacity on Trump might be “the way to win,” but there is no guarantee that Chris Christie will be the one taking the victory lap.
At the same time, Christie was much more popular with Republican voters in 2016 than he is today. So setting his sights on Trump could very well backfire on him, boosting Trump’s popularity while giving Christie zero traction.
What is the point of going to all the trouble to launch a presidential campaign, hire staffers, and debase yourself to donors if the only thing you want out of the effort is to be nothing more than the debate stage version of a Twitter Shit-Poster?
For heaven’s sake. Just use your Twitter account to attack Trump and spare yourself the time, expense, and energy of running a hopeless campaign.
In an op-ed in the Washington Post this week, New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu, who was toying with the idea of running for president, explained that he will not seek the Republican nomination in 2024 because the “stakes are too high for a crowded field to hand the nomination to a candidate who earns just 35 percent of the vote” (like Trump did in 2016), and Sununu wants to ensure that this doesn’t happen again in 2024.
Chris Christie could have done the same.
If Christie truly believes that Donald Trump shouldn’t be the 2024 Republican nominee, then he too could have done his part to make sure the GOP field isn’t a clown car of also-rans by staying the hell out of the primary.
But at the end of the day, Chris Christie is far too much like Donald Trump for his own good, and his ego would never have allowed him to follow Sununu’s lead.
In 2016, Chris Christie was complicit in splintering primary voters and handing the nomination to the guy who only received 35 percent of the vote.
Today, the Republican primary voters who didn’t want Trump in 2016 remember that. So who precisely is going to choose Christie this time around? Certainly not the Trump fans. Definitely not the people supporting DeSantis. Hell, even Republican voters who support Tim Scott, Nikki Haley, or Mike Pence aren’t going to appreciate this dope belly-flopping into the race, since their preferred candidates will be the ones getting screwed.
And that right there is the problem with a Christie campaign.
It’s a vanity project that will only make it harder for Republican voters to solidify behind a single candidate as a viable alternative to Trump.
And if history is any guide, when Christie does drop out in humiliation at the start of the primaries, he will waste no time throwing his support behind the guy he believes should never be the nominee.
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