The Road to Defeat: Chris Christie

The poet W. H. Auden once said “All we are not stares back at what we are”. In Chris Christie’s case, what he isn’t and never was is a man with a great pulse of the GOP base’s way of thinking. His decisions slowly lost him the initial Tea Party support he once had outside New Jersey because of his blunt talk and common sense approach. He appointed liberal judges, went after the 2nd amendment, appointed to the Senate someone who voted for the Gang of Eight immigration bill (probably because Christie wanted him to), and worst of all, he sided with Barack Obama against Republicans in the last stretch of a crucial election, which probably lost Romney a lot of support. His status as a RINO was. sealed in the eyes of the Republican base. Then the bridgegate scandal severely damaged his status in elite circles and with moderates. If he had run in 2012, God only knows how far he may have gotten. But by 2016 his tough guy shtick had gone out of fashion and his previous friends saw someone else to support in Donald Trump, Jeb Bush, and John Kasich (Ann Coulter, Joe Kyrillos, & Alfonse D’Amato for example). He was never going to be the nominee, no matter how hard he tried.

Follow me on twitter @highcradle