Friday, December 15, 2023

Chris Christie Needs to Stand Down

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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