2023-06-07 07:39:25
The squad of candidates for the presidential candidacy of the Republican Party is getting bigger every day. With the entry of Chris Christie, yesterday, and Mike Pence today, there are already eleven who are fighting for the title to face Joe Biden in next year’s elections and there may still be a twelfth this week if the candidacy is confirmed South Carolina Governor Doug Burgum.
In this context, and with an intention to vote less than 1% in the polls, the former governor of New Jersey chose to stand out from the pack by directly attacking Donald Trump, the favorite. None of the other “hypocrites” he criticized for pretending to have the same agenda as the former president “just being a little less crazy” have dared to rile him up. Trump has a loyal fan base estimated to be between 30% and 35% of Republican voters. How many more candidates share the remaining percentage, the more diluted the vote will be and the more difficult it will be to beat him.
On Tuesday Christie returned to the place where his presidential hopes died in 2016 to announce a new attempt. In New Hampshire he placed sixth and dropped out the next day, but that’s where he could find the niche of independent voters, who vote in the Republican Party primaries, to get the push he’s looking for. That was the audience for the Saint Anselm College Policy Institute. The former New Jersey governor addressed them as he did when he was a prosecutor, presenting oral arguments in a case against Trump, as if they were the jurors who will decide his fate. “I cannot promise you that what I am going to do will be successful, but I guarantee that in the end you will have no doubts about who I am, what I stand for and if I deserve it.”
That is precisely Christie’s Achilles heel. In the 2016 campaign, she went from being his rival to his bulldog and trusted adviser. He was seeking the state attorney general job that Trump never gave him. “He is an opportunist”, he accused him after he criticized him for not accepting the election result. Trump loyalists will not forgive him for these attacks, and those he tries to convince that he is the only serious conservative capable of exposing him and returning the country to the path of conciliation will always wonder if he will change his jacket again when the winds blow. blow in favor of the former president.
“Eight years ago it could be funny, I forgive you, but it’s not anymore,” he told the audience that in 2016 he rescued Trump from his defeat in Iowa. Christie served as a bulldog to destroy one of his main rivals, Senator Marco Rubio, in one of the debates and give the tabloid mogul credibility and recognition within the Reagan party by endorsing him. Yesterday he warned voters to beware of those politicians who only serve themselves and “the image they see in the mirror.” To those who do not know how to accept a defeat “because they never lose” and distribute the blame among those around them while they attribute any success to themselves. “In case I haven’t made it entirely clear, that’s Donald Trump, who like Voldemort is unmentionable.”
He made it difficult for former Vice President Mike Pence, who has already officially presented the papers for his candidacy and will announce it this afternoon in a public square-type interview on CNN, because that has been his style. In each interview avoid referring to the one who was his boss in the White House during despite the fact that he threw him to the beasts on January 6, 2020 so that they would hang him for having complied with his obligation to certify the electoral results that gave victory to Biden.
Pence doesn’t have much of a future in the campaign either, according to polls and analysts, but he has a lot of traction among religious groups that in the past have given victory to George W. Bush. His influence tipped Trump toward the most extreme conservatism on issues like abortion. The evangelicals know that it was he who was behind the successes obtained. The question is whether they will pragmatically bet on the man who gave them up, forgiving their extramarital dalliances with porn stars, or prefer one of their own.
It may be that none of these new candidates will ever face him on the stand, because there will be so many that the GOP debate committee has imposed a requirement to top 1% in three national polls or a combination of two with one in one of the first four states that decide the tie -Iowa, New Hampshire, Carolina of the South and Nevada). The latter is the scenario on which Christie bets to guarantee his place in the debates, where he shines for his direct style of lawyer without compassion for his prey. Of course, if he doesn’t get it, he promises to retire without doing his dirty work this time. “I am not a contract killer,” he assured.
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