Opinion | A Reality Check for Chris Christie

If nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come, sometimes nothing is harder than giving up on an idea whose time is never going to arrive.

Chris Christie had an idea about the 2024 race and his role in it that, whatever its initial plausibility, hasn’t proved out. He should accordingly fold his tent before he plays the role of spoiler and helps nominate the man, Donald Trump, he is committed to stopping.

As an admirer of the former New Jersey governor, it gives me no pleasure to say this. He is a gifted communicator and compelling persona who was a good governor of his state and who says important and true things about Trump. All that is to his credit, and he has much to contribute to the Republican cause — just not as a candidate for president in this time and place.

The Christie theory of the case was that he’d take it to Trump hammer and tongs in the debates. That his honesty would be refreshing to Republican voters. And that he’d consolidate the non-Trump vote, which would be bigger than many expected.

None of this has come to fruition.

Despite Christie’s best efforts to goad him into the debates, Trump has avoided them. Christie has taken shots at Trump from the stage nonetheless, especially over his skipping the events. Otherwise, rather than being the anti-Trump, heat-seeking, missile-creating, must-watch pyrotechnics at the debates, Christie has been reduced to a standard Republican ex-governor enunciating standard Republican positions.

He’s cogent and well-informed, but he hasn’t held office since January 2018 and the spirited fights with the public-sector unions that made him a Republican hero are now half-remembered history.

In two of the three debates, Republicans thought Christie performed worst among all the candidates, according to Washington Post polling. In the third debate, 24 percent thought he performed worst, a slightly better showing than Vivek Ramaswamy. This isn’t necessarily commentary on his performance so much as the resistance many Republicans have to anything he says.

At the beginning of the year, it was possible to see Christie’s unvarnished attacks on Trump accruing to his benefit. They might make him seem a tough, authentic truth-teller. They’ve only made him more unpopular, though.

He didn’t start out in a robust place, and yet his unfavorable rating has still ticked upward. It tends to be above 50 percent among Republicans. YouGov polling has had his unfavorable rating slightly higher among Republicans than Democrats, hovering about 60 percent among both liberals and conservatives.

Christie certainly is among the most unpopular candidates ever to seek his own party’s presidential nomination.

If Christie has been right so far in believing that Ron DeSantis wouldn’t be able to consolidate the non-MAGA vote, the problem for him is that Nikki Haley has swooped in and begun to do it herself. Perhaps Christie — more critical of Trump and more traditional in his policy commitments — could have been an alternative to DeSantis. There’s not much of a case for him as an alternative to Haley, though, who is soaking up the voters and donors Christie would need to become more plausible.

At this point, he’s the alternative to the alternative to the alternative.

Christie is right, as he said on TV the other day, that voters don’t have paint-by-numbers reactions to campaigns determined by the polling. The dynamic is more fluid than that, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t hard realities. It’s difficult to see any scenario that makes sense for Christie.

If Trump wins Iowa, it’s possible the horse is out of the barn and no one is stopping him in New Hampshire or beyond. But if Trump wins Iowa and the race is still alive, Haley might get a boost if she finishes a surprise second. In that case, why would Christie try to blunt her momentum in New Hampshire?

Or let’s say that DeSantis or Haley pulls off an upset in Iowa and charges into New Hampshire. Again, why would such a dedicated anti-Trump candidate make their lives harder by siphoning some portion of the non-Trump vote away?

If there’s one candidate who’s not going to get a bump in Iowa, it’s Christie who has avoided the Hawkeye state and has never exceeded 5 percent in Iowa polling, according to RealClearPolitics. He’s counting on winning New Hampshire from a dead stop with no momentum coming out of Iowa, while candidates besides him are going to finish first or second in the first contest of the year.

Christie’s is a genuine one-state campaign. DeSantis is effectively running one as well now, in Iowa, but at least a win there can plausibly pay dividends down the road for him.

Let’s say that Haley completely deflates before anyone caucuses or votes. Even if Christie were to inherit all of the former South Carolina governor’s voters, he has a starker version of the same problem she does — how does he break out of the minority, non-Trump segment of the party to forge a winning plurality when he’s even more unacceptable to MAGA voters than she is?

Would he take a New Hampshire victory onto South Carolina and beat Trump there? The latest polling there has had Christie ranging from 0 to 3 percent.

In New Hampshire, Christie is not like Doug Burgrum or Asa Hutchinson who are scooping up 1 or 2 percent when they aren’t asterisks. He has a meaningful increment of the vote. He’s in third place at a little over 11 percent in the RealClearPolitics average. In a CNN/University of New Hampshire poll, he hit 14 percent. Add that to Haley’s 20 percent, and you get a number that is in the neighborhood of Trump’s 42.

Who is better suited, in terms of resources and support elsewhere, to make a run in New Hampshire and translate it more into than a one-off in a quirky state? Haley or Christie? It’s not even a close call. Haley is in second in South Carolina and tied for second in Iowa. The Americans for Prosperity endorsement that came Tuesday will give her significant financial backing and organizers in the field in the final weeks.

Haley and DeSantis are in competition, but fishing in slightly different waters, ideologically and demographically. That’s not true of Christie and Haley.

As Aaron Blake of the Washington Post points out, Christie and Haley are drawing largely, if not exclusively, from independents and Democrats and moderates and liberals in New Hampshire, as well as Biden voters. Whatever Christie ultimately gets will come from her voting pool.

Blake notes, by the way, that Christie is particularly strong among Biden voters, never a good sign for a Republican. According to the CNN poll, even in New Hampshire, Christie has a 60 percent unfavorable rating among Republicans and 63 percent say they’d be angry or dissatisfied if he were the nominee. And this is his best state, where he’s made some progress.

Everyone is a long shot to beat Trump at this point, but Christie’s campaign is snowed under by multiple improbabilities. There’s a Hail Mary pass, and then there’s starting from your own goal line with seconds left, throwing a Hail Mary to get to the 50, executing a hook and ladder to get to the 30, and then working desperation laterals as time expires all the way to the end zone.

When Mike Pence and Tim Scott realized the race wasn’t going to break their way, they did the hard, but correct thing: drop out to clear the way for others. Chris Christie has been in public life since the 1990s, and believes, not unreasonably, that he’d be a good president. Standing down surely goes against his every instinct, but the moment calls for a cold-eyed look at the circumstances and a willingness to take a hit for the greater good.

It’s an idea whose time has come.