By Nick Catoggio
Wednesday, January 03, 2024
One
thing that distinguishes adults from children is our ability to manage our
emotions. The desirable course isn’t always the sensible course: Adults
understand that in a way children don’t.
In
theory. Less so in practice.
For
instance, once it became clear that former Harvard President Claudine Gay
had plagiarized
passages in some of her work, the plainly sensible course for her peers was
to stop defending her. Preserving public faith in academia and the integrity of
scholarship, especially at an institution as august as Harvard, should have
mattered more than saving Gay’s job. “Zero tolerance for unethical behavior, no
matter who does it” was the obvious position.
The
problem for Gay’s colleagues and their ideological allies in American media is
that they despise the right-wing activists who exposed Gay’s plagiarism,
particularly culture warrior extraordinaire Christopher Rufo. The sensible
course was to cut Gay loose but the desirable course, which these alleged
adults couldn’t resist, was to grasp for excuses to spite their political
enemies by denying
them a coveted scalp.
They
couldn’t manage their emotions. And because they couldn’t, they’ve made a
pitiful spectacle of themselves following Gay’s
resignation. Bad-faith allegations of
racism, idiotic complaints about
conservatives weaponizing
plagiarism against, er, plagiarists—it’s a juvenile temper
tantrum by some of the luminaries of American intellectual life. In
the end, not only did they fail to save Gay, they revealed that their actual
unspoken ethical standard for plagiarism is “lots of tolerance for unethical
behavior depending on who does it.” Adults nowadays actually aren’t very good
at separating what’s sensible from what’s desirable, particularly when
political passions are inflamed. That’s the story of Gay’s resignation.
And
it’s the story of this year’s Republican presidential primary, too.
Whatever
else you want to call it when a candidate is indicted on a gazillion criminal
charges and promptly gains a gazillion points in the polls, “sensible” ain’t
it. Emotion, not reason, is the hallmark of the
adults in this particular room.
I
have a confession, though. I’ve been struggling lately myself with condoning
what’s sensible over what’s desirable with respect to the coming primaries.
What’s
sensible, clearly, is for the anti-Trump vote to consolidate behind a single
challenger. That challenger should be Nikki Haley, as she’s the only candidate
in the field within
25 points of Trump in any race. The less competition there is for
Trump-skeptical voters, the easier consolidation will be. Which means Chris
Christie needs to go, the sooner, the better.
It
would be sensible. But would it be desirable?
Maybe
he should hang in there after all.
***
“Chris
Christie is a friend. But his race is at an absolute dead end,” New Hampshire’s
Republican Gov. Chris Sununu, a Haley supporter, said in a
recent interview. “Chris is only talking about Trump. That’s it, he’s kind
of a one-man show. And I know he says he wants to stay in the race to speak the
truth about Trump, but that translating to votes in a primary is a very
different thing and he’s hit a ceiling.”
All
true. Since mid-November, Christie has been stuck at 10
percent in Sununu’s home state while Haley has risen to a hair shy of
25. Ron DeSantis has underperformed egregiously there, choosing to focus on
Iowa instead, yet he’s still just a point behind Christie in the RealClearPolitics average
of New Hampshire polling. There’s no longer any scenario in which the former
governor of New Jersey wins that state, if ever there was.
Even
if you contrive a scenario in which Haley, DeSantis, and Vivek Ramaswamy all
drop out, handing Christie a one-on-one death match with Trump, his gruesome
unfavorability among Republican voters would ensure a Trump
landslide.
Sununu’s
also right that Christie spends most of his time talking about Trump. Consider
a few quotes from his recent television ads. December 15:
“I’m in this race because the truth needs to be spoken. He is unfit.” December 28:
“I’m the only one saying Donald Trump is a liar.” January 3: “‘Don’t
mention his name. Don’t criticize him. Don’t do anything.’ I can’t stand by and
silently acquiesce to that.” When Christie was asked on Wednesday about
Sununu’s criticism, he replied by
bringing up—what else? “I remember when Chris used to care about Donald Trump,”
he said of Sununu. “He’s the guy who came, I think, to the Gridiron Club and
said that Trump belongs in a mental institution. And now he’s saying that he’d
vote for him if he were the nominee.”
On
Wednesday, he compared Trump to Jefferson Davis—unfavorably.
As a longstanding Never Trumper, I admire the zeal of his (too recent)
conversion.
But
there’s nothing in any of this that resembles a strategy to actually win the
primary.
What
Christie’s doing might more aptly be described as an anti-strategy. The more he
dogs Haley as a wimp who won’t speak the truth about Trump as boldly as he
will, the more contemptuously his base of Never Trumpers in New Hampshire may
come to view her. He could poison her ability to win them over even if he does
ultimately quit the race before Primary Day. Guess which candidate would
benefit if that happens.
Hint:
It’s the same one whom Christie famously
endorsed in 2016.
In
other words, Chris Christie isn’t doing what’s sensible—he’s doing what he
finds desirable. Speaking truths that the cowards around you dare not speak is
exhilarating, particularly when it has moral force. The scorn he’s received
from devotees of one of the worst political figures in American history must
feel to him like a badge of honor. And the attention he’s gotten from the
media for his crusade is doubtless gratifying, especially since this
is his last hurrah as a political candidate. There’s a powerful appeal to the
type of campaign he’s running.
But
if his goal is to prevent Donald Trump from being reelected president, dividing
the anti-Trump vote in New Hampshire for the sake of truthbombing a hostile
Republican electorate is, shall we say, a curious way to achieve it.
Haley,
not Christie, is the one who’s behaved sensibly by declining to criticize Trump
in ways that would alienate most Republican voters and render her unviable.
Consider, for example, this new soundbite from one of her latest town halls, in
which she finally “took
the fight” to Trump. To Christie, “taking the fight” to him would mean
calling him an insurrectionist sociopath and probable felon who can never again
be trusted with power. To Haley, it means grumbling about deficits.
She
knows Trump is loathsome. She’d surely love to say so. (Her “disgust” bubbled
to the surface briefly after January 6.) But she’s forced herself to do what’s
sensible, not what’s desirable. And because she has, there’s a small chance
that she’ll win New Hampshire and a teeny tiny—yet non-zero—chance that she’ll
win the Republican nomination. Adults tend to perform more competently than
children and this case is no exception: If the Trump era ends this spring,
we’ll owe it to Nikki Haley’s self-discipline, not Chris Christie’s
self-indulgence.
If
Christie refuses to quit, however, we’re facing a disaster in which Haley not
only loses a close race in the northeast that she might have won had he exited
beforehand—but which anti-anti-Trump partisans would inevitably exploit to
justify their continued membership in this disgraceful party. Trump
wouldn’t have won the nomination if he hadn’t won New Hampshire and he wouldn’t
have won New Hampshire if not for Never Trumper Chris Christie. It’s still a
normal party! We can support it in good conscience.
So
it’s settled. Christie should get out, right?
Well,
not so fast.
***
The
problem with asking Christie to quit the race for strategic reasons is that
doing so implicitly validates cowardice as the sensible approach to Trump.
“I
think he’s a smart guy. He wants to have a voice in this party,” Sununu said of
Christie in an interview this past weekend, urging him to drop out.
“So I just think he’s going to make the right decision in the end. He wants to
make sure this party comes together.” On Wednesday, in a piece
for The Bulwark, Will Saletan took righteous exception to that:
When Sununu advises Christie to “make a quick
calculation” and bow out so that “this party comes together”—and so that
Christie can continue to “have a voice in this party”—he isn’t just telling
Christie to yield to Haley. He’s inviting Christie to be more like her. He’s
encouraging Christie to practice the same craven self-preservation that gave
Trump power over the GOP in the first place.
“In
other words, Christie is right. [Haley is] a coward,” Saletan concluded. “The
political case for Haley is the moral case against her.”
Correct.
Haley the “adult” is also Haley the “coward,” another careerist refugee from
the pre-Trump GOP willing to trade moral
clarity for the sake of ambition. She’s a willing participant in the conspiracy
of silence within the Republican establishment about how dangerous a
second Trump presidency would be. And she’s been rewarded for that
cowardice—something this newsletter and this publication typically and justly
detests—with growing support among Republican voters.
Compare
her views with Christie’s on whether Trump should be pardoned. “A leader needs
to think about what’s in the best interest of the country,” Haley said
last week. “What’s in the best interest of the country is not to have an
80-year-old man sitting in jail that continues to divide our country.” That’s a
defensible position on the merits, but it stinks of fear and cynicism coming
from a candidate who has resolved never to offend Trump’s voters. And it
amounts to rewarding Trump’s ethic of intimidation by placing him above the law
post-conviction, not knowing what he might encourage his supporters to do if he
isn’t freed.
Now
here’s Christie.
How
is a Never Trumper supposed to process those two answers and feel comfortable
sacrificing Christie to aid Haley? How are we in a position in which a
candidate who couldn’t
bring herself to say the word “slavery” when discussing the Civil War
is somehow the last best hope for a saner GOP?
I’ve
written many times about
the current Republican “hostage crisis,” in which populists threaten to blow up
the party if they don’t get their way—i.e., if Trump doesn’t get his
way—and gutless conservatives meekly acquiesce to their demands, terrified that
Democrats will benefit if they don’t. By challenging Trump, Haley is trying to
end that crisis in her own way. But the way she’s gone about it, declining to
confront the hostage-takers about their most
corrupt civic impulses, suggests that it won’t end even if she prevails.
She’ll simply become a political hostage herself, forever anxious about
crossing an illiberal base without whose support she’ll be doomed in a general
election.
Haley
is the candidate of accommodation. Christie is the candidate of schism.
If
you think the party is beyond saving, or doesn’t deserve saving given the state
it’s in, you can’t help but appreciate having just one figure
in the race barking at the hostage-takers about how contemptible they are. At
this point, I doubt Chris Christie cares a whit about “having a voice” in the
GOP after the primaries are over, let alone wanting to “bring it together”
behind Trump. Why would he, when his insistence on telling the truth has made
him a pariah among all but 10 percent or so of the Republican electorate? He’s
so toxic due to his candor about Trump that him endorsing Haley would very
plausibly do her more harm than good.
Chris
Sununu, of all people, should know how little it means to “have a voice” in the
current Republican Party. Last year, unable to make the case frankly that Trump
is unfit for office, he resorted to claiming instead that Trump was
unelectable—and looked ridiculous doing so, as that’s never
been less true. He also declined to run for reelection as governor—after
passing on a winnable Senate race in 2022—because he knows that Trump bears a
grudge against him and that zombified Republican primary voters therefore would
have borne one too, never mind his solid conservative record in office.
Remaining
in this party at this point isn’t desirable and, under such circumstances,
doesn’t seem particularly sensible either. If you want the GOP to reform, only
a fracture on the right—a mutual hostage crisis, we might call it—that leads to
electoral disaster would force populists to sober up. Nikki Haley winning New
Hampshire after Chris Christie drops out and then getting obliterated in South
Carolina and in the Super Tuesday states doesn’t do that. It achieves nothing.
Except, perhaps, reminding populists that even a united “normie” front in the
party is no match for MAGA.
But
if that argument for Christie staying in doesn’t grab you, there’s a more
practical one.
***
If
Trump loses next fall, I suspect his defeat will owe more to Chris Christie
than to Nikki Haley.
Which
seems counterintuitive. If hard feelings on the right over the primary linger
into November, typically we attribute them to divisions between the nominee and
his top challenger. That’s Haley. Christie is a nonfactor in the race.
No
one expects Haley to lead any sort of principled resistance to Trump, though.
She’ll endorse him quickly after dropping out, not wanting to squander the
goodwill she earned with Republican voters this cycle ahead of 2028. Most of
her supporters will turn out for him in November with her enthusiastic
encouragement.
It’s
Christie’s voters who are going to be doing some deep thinking about the
general election.
There
can be no accommodation with Trump or with his Republican enablers. That’s his
message. That’s why he’s refused to quit the race. It seems to have resonated
with the 10 percent or so of GOP voters who still view him favorably.
Ten
percent is a big share in a country where presidential elections lately tend to
be decided by a few thousand votes across a few battleground states.
It
wouldn’t shock me if Chris Christie ended his political career this summer by
endorsing Joe Biden at the Democratic convention, giving his primary supporters
one last nudge about the stakes of the coming election. He, more than any other
figure, created a permission structure for “normie” Republicans to support
Trump when he made his endorsement in 2016. Supporting Biden this year would be
a bookend to that, offering a permission structure for the anti-Trump rump on
the right to refuse to support him this time.
Until
then, his decision to stick around in the GOP primary rather than yield to the
sane but cowardly Haley can be read as a signal to those voters about how they
should approach the coming election. “No” to Trump—and “no” to a party
establishment that knows better but is willing to serve him anyway. Christie
might matter more than Haley in the end.
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