And soon he’s got to return home to New Jersey, where most people hate him. Via Politico:
He was supposed to be the brash, blunt New York-area candidate who told it like it is. Then came Donald Trump.
Chris Christie, the voluble New Jersey governor, is once again facing the possibility that he might be relegated to the junior varsity debate — and rival Republican campaigns and outside observers say his window to re-enter the top tier of presidential candidates is closing fast.
Wednesday night’s scene in New Hampshire showed the daunting challenge ahead of Christie. As CNN, Fox News and MSNBC covered Trump’s first town hall live — breaking only to run clips of Jeb Bush attacking the real estate tycoon — Christie was gasping for air on C-SPAN. Because the governor’s dimly lit event — a town hall at a restaurant outside of Manchester — was outdoors, the few viewers watching saw the candidate gradually disappear into darkness. The next day’s headlines duly focused on the Jeb-Donald contretemps, ignoring Christie’s play for a state he has made central to his fading White House hopes.“He’s just not getting the traction that I think he was expecting,” said Andy Seale, the former chairman of the Republican Party in Hillsborough County, New Hampshire.
Christie has become such an also-ran that The Associated Press and The New York Times recently reassigned reporters dedicated to covering Christie — Jill Colvin and Kate Zernike — to other beats.
Then there are the polls.
If current trends hold, the New Jersey governor will likely lose his spot in the prime-time CNN/Reagan Library debate on Sept. 16, displaced by a surging Carly Fiorina. As of midday Thursday, Christie was in 11th place among GOP presidential contenders in the RealClearPolitics average of national polls — behind Trump, Bush, Ben Carson, Gov. Scott Walker, Sen. Marco Rubio, Sen. Ted Cruz, Fiorina, Sen. Rand Paul, Gov. John Kasich, and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee.
On Tuesday, a new CNN/ORC poll found Christie in 11th place, with only 3 percent support among registered GOP voters. (A separate POLITICO analysis of the five most recent national polls that would factor into who would appear for the main debate finds Christie tied with Kasich for 10th place. For now.)
And with Trump owning the Straight Talk vote, said former New Jersey Gov. Thomas Kean, there’s little Christie can do to claw his way back.
Since he’s now deeply despised in his home state, he’ll be used as an attack dog against, first, any Repub candidate the PTB’s do NOT want as their nominee, and, in the general election, against the Dem nominee and Dems nationwide.
He’ll do his attacking claiming to be acting as a “prosecutor” representing the people’s interests.
Oh, and he’ll want to punch out teachers and their unions.
If Cristie were smart, he’d go crawl back into the hole from which he came. If he does too much babbling and bullying, somebody might just rat him out over the bridge closure deal, or his mis-use of the hurricane money—take your pick. He certainly doesn’t want to see indictment papers being handed down, now does he?
What a shame — all that carefully scheduled radical weight loss for nothing. Now that he’s toast (so to speak), I wonder if he’ll just say fuggit, undo the surgery, and go back to his gluttonous ways.
Good thing that his fortunes have plummeted so dramatically, since he’s just as evil and dangerous as Scott Walker.
Beached whales often throw themselves back onto the beach after being rescued. Chris Christy needs someone to take him out to deeper waters, where there’s no risk of him coming back. Probably lots of Jersey boys out there to keep him company, all sporting identical footwear.
Seriously, this guy is among the worst in a lineup of troglodytes. If he ever stood out, it was only because he provided shade for everyone else. He won’t be missed at the Federal level, or any level.
I’ve already forgotten who we were talking about.