The former New Jersey governor made an ill-fated entrance into the GOP primary yesterday, thereby joining the seemingly thousands of other candidates who are never going to poll above 1%.
He went so far as to compare Trump to Voldemort, which might be a bridge too far. Also, the Ivanka denunciation was a little over the top, since she’s not in the political arena. But he did take the time to bash Trump’s cancerous son-in-law, Jared, which I wholeheartedly endorse. As far as I’m concerned, Trump needs to make one of his campaign pledges to not allow Jared within a 5-mile radius of the White House.
It’s pretty clear, based on the rhetoric employed in his campaign announcement speech, that the party leadership and donor class have recruited Christie to be the attack dog targeting Trump, and the corporate state media is here for it.
Via BBC:
As former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie enters the 2024 race for the White House, he has one mission: to torpedo Donald Trump’s campaign. But his low popularity among Republicans may thwart his efforts to launch a head-on attack.
Seven years ago, his failed bid for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination featured debate-stage fireworks, disappointing voting results and a surprisingly early endorsement of Mr Trump.
Now, Mr Christie will need to take the current front-runner down a peg and then position himself as the one who can win.
In a speech kicking off his campaign, the former governor quickly went on the attack, calling Mr Trump a “lonely, self-consumed, self-serving mirror hog“.
Calling other people hogs probably isn’t the best optics for Christie.
Many of the other candidates have been tepid, to put it mildly, when it comes to wading into the Trump issue. They’re trying to take his voters away, so they don’t want to put them off by attacking him too hard, but unless they go full-frontal on Trump, they’re never going to budge in the polls. Why would anyone vote for Trump Light when they can have the real thing?
Allow Walter White to explain the dilemma.
The reason Chris Christie is hopeless as a candidate isn’t that he’s currently polling at nothing. Trump started off that way in 2015. It’s possible to build momentum over time. The reason Christie, Haley, Pence, et al. are destined to fail is that they’re repeating boring, outdated GOP talking points from the Mitt Romney era. That’s all over, but they can’t let it go because their donors inform their talking points, not any kind of ideological core.
On another note, this might be fascism or whatever (because fitness is now right-wing, according to liberal media), but I don’t actually think 400-pound behemoths like Chris Christie qualify to be president. They are automatically disqualified in my mind based on their heft alone. Unless he’s one of the tiny fraction of a percent of the population that suffers from a legitimate congenital health condition that makes losing weight impossible or near impossible, this is not the body of someone who lives responsibly.
He needs to get his physical house in order before he goes around tending to the nation’s problems. Baby steps.