Chris Christie, you have one job
Timothy P. Carney
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Former Gov. Chris Christie reports that he has enough individual donors to make the first Republican debate. This would be great news, except that it looks like former President Donald Trump will not be on that stage.
Trump’s absence would be unfortunate because Christie could play an important role in the 2024 Republican primary. Specifically, Christie is the best-positioned person to humiliate Trump. If he succeeds at making Trump look bad, Christie will open the door for a Republican nominee who is more conservative, more electable, and more decent than Trump.
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Yet the past record, of the GOP field, and of Christie in particular, make it dubious that Christie will actually stick to his job.
In 2016, for the most part, no Republican had the skills or determination to take down Trump. Many of the contenders believed that they just had to be the last non-Trump candidate, and then they would have a decent chance at the nomination.
Only late in the game did Sens. Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Ted Cruz (R-TX) realize that they needed to head-on attack Trump. In that March 2016 debate, the two proved pretty good at it, especially Rubio. Unfortunately, there was a fourth guy onstage at the time — John Kasich. Kasich regularly halted the momentum Cruz and Rubio had going against Trump, and thus played defense for Trump.
Likewise, back before the 2016 New Hampshire primary, when Republicans possibly could have seriously wounded Trump (who had just lost Iowa), it was Christie himself who decided that attacking Rubio was more important than attacking Trump.
So this time, let’s hope that Chris Christie’s talk so far hasn’t been mere bluster. To date, his public comments have been ruthless attacks on Trump. When he is on the debate stage, whether with Trump or without, he should spend about zero seconds attacking Mike Pence, Ron DeSantis, Tim Scott, or other candidates.
Christie has one job: to expose Trump’s incontinence, ignorance, incompetence, and narcissism and thus show Republican primary voters and other Republican primaries that the only hope for the GOP and conservatism is abandoning this wretched man.