Don’t look now, but Chris Christie is having a moment.
While Donald Trump is clearly the prohibitive front-runner for the Republican nomination, there is no denying that Christie is the most interesting of the growing Republican field of candidates clamoring for that coveted spot. Consider just a few of Christie’s recent greatest hits.
When Trump mocked Christie’s weight, Christie, appearing on Fox News’ “MediaBuzz,” responded, “Oh what, like he’s some Adonis?” When asked about Trump diverting campaign money to pay for his legal expenses, Christie called him “the cheapest S.O.B. I’ve ever met in my life.” And regarding the GOP’s performances in 2018, 2020, and 2022, Christie called the former president a “three-time loser.” For better or worse, when it comes to throwing elbows, at least, he kind of sounds like…Trump.
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Christie is also not above dinging other Republicans for their cowardice towards Trump.
For example, after Ron DeSantis tried to dodge a question about Jan. 6 by saying he wasn’t in Washington at the time, Christie mocked him, saying, “Did he have a TV? Was he alive that day? Did he see what was going on? I mean, that’s one of the most ridiculous answers I’ve heard in this race so far.” Vinny Gambini in My Cousin Vinny couldn’t have put it any better.
I don’t want to go too far out on a brittle limb here. Christie is still polling at under 3 percent.
Still, I wouldn’t be surprised if (unlike many of his GOP competitors) Christie’s trajectory is still on the rise. There are a couple of reasons for this.
First, Christie is the only contender who actually realizes the 2024 election is about one question and one question only: Trump or not Trump.
This is to say, the 2024 GOP primary is not about who has the best 10-point policy plan or who is the most anti-woke. It’s simply about whether or not Republicans want Trump again.
Christie is the only candidate whose strategy and message suggest he accepts this reality—and is acting accordingly.
What this means is that Christie can get on TV at any time he wants because Trump is always in the news.
Will this allow him to gradually consolidate a larger chunk of the GOP primary and get to double digits, possibly even blowing everyone’s mind by becoming Trump’s main rival? That’s the unanswerable question.
But what I do know is that Christie is the only Republican opponent who has the correct interpretation of what the primary is about. And that is a huge advantage.
This also brings us to the second reason Christie has a chance to gain traction. He’s the only non-Trump candidate who is not only tough, but also funny and entertaining.
Perhaps it’s a commentary on our culture, but this is vitally important. In fact, I would say that Trump’s entertainment value is a wildly underrated political attribute.
A recent column in the Financial Times notes that in a 2016 paper, “...three anthropologists from the University of Colorado Boulder and University of Texas at Austin argued it was the fact that Trump was so entertaining, above all else, that won him the Republican nomination that year.”
Jemima Kelly, the FT columnist, goes on to note that “If there’s one thing the former president does have, it’s personality. It’s not that he’s likeable. No, Trump has a much rarer gift: he’s funny.”
I get that “funny” is a weird description for a guy who tried to stop the peaceful transfer of power, but let’s be honest, Trump is at least partly a stand-up comedian.
And while it might be convenient to assume that to his fans, the cruelty is the point, at least some of his fans think entertainment is the point. To them, Trump is an authentic class clown in a world full of boring rule-followers who spew scripted talking points.
This brings us back to Christie. Not only is he the only Republican who understands he is running against Trump, he’s the only candidate who comes close to matching him as an entertainer.
It might not be enough to sway Republican primary voters, but that’s on their collective conscience. Christie can’t control how voters will respond to his message. What he can control is how he delivers it.
And on that count, he’s hitting it out of the park.
