Let’s hear it for Chris Christie, who had the balls to do what none of the other Republican job-seekers would do. They should have learned by now that their emperor has no clothes, that renominating Trump will be the party’s kiss of death. The old adage above was never more applicable.
If you need to be refreshed about Christie, you could start here where, among many others—not all fans—former NJ governor Tom Kean said about him: “He’s the most able politician I know, with possibly the exception of Bill Clinton.”
Still, as many have expressed, he’s on a suicide mission because he’ll never get the nomination. That doesn’t matter as long as Trump is deposed. When the subject of Christie came up in my poker group the other day, there was rampant enthusiasm for him. Several of us said, “I’ll send him $5,” because he needs 40,000 unique contributions to get on the debate stage for the Republican primary.
Unlike most of his GOP compatriots, the former prosecutor will likely support the massive charges just brought against Trump and the DOJ which brought them. This will not go down well with the Quixotic idiots who have now made Trump’s defense an obsessive talking point. Their language seems paralyzed with its constant references to the “weaponizing” of the DOJ and its “witch hunt.” As with Pence’s confusion about easing off on Trump, any real defense of him is finally a denial of the rule of law.
The Intelligencer’s Jonathan Chait wrote today:
The sickness of the Republican Party as it is presently constituted is that there is no conceivable set of facts that would permit it to acknowledge Trump’s guilt. . . . It is the interplay of two forces, the paranoia of the right and the seamy criminality of the right’s current champion, that has brought the party to this point.
After enduring a series of slights and insults, Christie finally broke with Trump after the Jan. 6th insurrection. Did he stay too long? Probably, but the Democrats could hardly wish for a better supporter. Even if he’s a Republican.