National Review Online
Friday, December 15, 2023
The latest polling out of Iowa and New Hampshire has
confirmed how slim the odds are that Donald Trump will somehow be denied the
Republican nomination, but that’s no reason for candidates supposedly opposed
to Trump acting to make it even easier for him to win.
Yes, we are looking at you, Chris Christie. (We’d also
look at Asa Hutchinson, but he has not been seen in months.)
As things stand now, Christie could pull off a trick no
one else would dare attempt — helping Trump win the nomination as a devoted
supporter in 2016, and then turning around and helping him win the nomination
as a fierce opponent in 2024.
Christie has been, as the cliché goes, running for
“president of New Hampshire,” but since he’s a distant third, maybe it’s more
accurate to say he’s been running for “speaker of the house of New Hampshire,”
third-in-line in the succession. The former New Jersey governor has gotten some
traction, hitting 14 percent in a recent poll, just several points behind Nikki
Haley in second.
Going up is better than going down, but Christie’s bump
in New Hampshire is much more likely to feed his political delusions than
result in anything salutary for the larger cause.
First, all indications are that his vote is being
cannibalized from Haley, who just won the endorsement of New Hampshire governor
Chris Sununu. Without Christie in the race, she’d be at least a little closer
to Trump, who is in the 40s in the state.
Second, even if Christie pulled off an upset victory in
New Hampshire, there’d be nowhere else for him to go. A hypothetical Christie
win would rely heavily on support from independents and Democrats in the open
New Hampshire primary. Those conditions would be impossible to replicate
elsewhere. Christie himself has said he’d go next to Michigan, where
unaffiliated voters can also participate. But Michigan is the fifth contest on
the Republican calendar.
A lot of mockery was devoted to Marco Rubio’s so-called
3-2-1 plan in 2016, building from third in Iowa to first in South Carolina.
Christie, who is not competitive anywhere but New Hampshire at the moment, is
basically advancing a 4-1-4-4-1 plan, losing everywhere but the Granite State
and Michigan.
To call this fanciful is almost an insult to more
garden-variety political fantasies. It is true that there is precedent for
candidates lurking back in the pack in New Hampshire to surge in the last
couple of weeks. But there is no precedent for candidates as hated by their
parties as Chris Christie ever winning a nomination. The latest Economist/YouGov
poll puts his favorability among Republicans at 22 percent favorable and 62
percent unfavorable. He’s more popular among Democrats. Even in New Hampshire,
Christie is radioactive among Republicans.
None of this is to deny Christie’s talents as a
politician, his accomplishments in New Jersey, or the important truths he’s
been speaking about Donald Trump. But he could just as easily say those things
from a TV set or a podium without running for president, and potentially doing
Trump an unintended political favor.
If Christie is as committed to stopping Donald Trump as
he says, it’s time for him to retire to his tent.
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