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Politics Foreign Affairs Culture Fellows Program

There Will Not Be a Christie “Comeback”

More than anything else, Christie's candidacy is simply redundant at this point.
Chris Christie OK

Josh Kraushaar makes the case for a Christie comeback:

If you just look at his na­tion­al and early-state num­bers, which still hov­er in the low single-di­gits, it would be easy to con­clude that he faces near-im­possible odds of win­ning the GOP’s pres­id­en­tial nom­in­a­tion; by the former meas­ure, he was left off the stage at the last Re­pub­lic­an de­bate. But after con­sid­er­ing the gov­ernor’s stra­tegic dis­cip­line—win New Hamp­shire or else—and for­tu­it­ous mes­sage fo­cused on na­tion­al se­cur­ity and law-and-or­der is­sues [bold mine-DL], it’s clear that Christie is well-po­si­tioned for a polit­ic­al comeback.

One of the odder pieces of conventional wisdom about Christie is that he has some advantage on national security issues. Ever since he quarreled with Rand Paul a couple years ago over NSA surveillance, it has been obvious that he is a reliable booster of giving more power to the government in the name of security. This was a losing proposition politically among Republicans at the time, and it’s not clear that Christie would be the one to benefit most even if that has changed. Christie has made a point of imitating Giuliani with his references to 9/11 and with his national security demagoguery in general, and like Giuliani Christie has no particular expertise on terrorism or foreign policy. When Christie has spoken on these issues, he has mostly embarrassed himself. That’s what he did recently when he was talking about terrorism in New Hampshire recently:

Our world war is happening right now [bold mine-DL], has been happening,” said Christie as he opened the town hall. “You and I all in this room all know, all understand, that a couple of weeks ago this campaign changed dramatically.”

Christie’s “world war” rhetoric is typically overwrought. It reminds us Christie relies almost exclusively on exaggeration and alarmism in delivering his “message focused on national security.” The funny thing here is that the campaign hasn’t changed dramatically in the last few weeks. The Paris attacks barely changed the campaign at all. That’s why Christie continues to be one of several candidates with no chance of becoming nominee. New Hampshire may be Christie’s best state, and yet he is a distant seventh in the poll average, and he is doing slightly worse than he was a few months ago.

More than anything else, Christie’s candidacy is simply redundant at this point. If one wants a pro-torture defender of the security and surveillance state, one could just as easily back Rubio, who strangely thinks that attacking other candidates for their opposition to expansive surveillance practices will be a vote-winner. If one wants a loudmouth nationalist who entertains pushing heavy-handed and excessive policies, Trump is already available. Christie has nothing to offer voters except a rather dismal record in New Jersey and exceptionally poor approval ratings as governor.

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