How Chris Christie Can Win the Republican Presidential Nomination

 

This might be one of my worst political predictions ever.  But I leave it here as a reminder that nothing in politics goes according to plan or prediction.

At first glance, Gov. Chris Christie has no shot at winning the Republican Party’s 2016 presidential nomination.  One might even go so far to say, he’s never stood a chance as a sort of political bird flying among fish that prefer to swim.

Gov. Christie come into the campaign with serious baggage, which was especially burdensome for a Republican.  The New Jersey governor lacks legitimate ultra-conservative credentials and is widely looked upon by many with suspicion and even scorn as a so-called “RINO” moderate, especially within extremist circles which have come to control the G.O.P. at virtually every level, including his own political backyard in the northeast.  Gov. Christie doesn’t even try to nudge his way into the loony bin of Bible-thumping, gun toting, immigrant-bashing, Obama haters.  He lacks the firebrand rhetoric of his Republican cohorts, who continuously clang the Pavlovian bells that make the party faithful pant, salivate, and go woof.

That all said, if things curiously break his way in the next couple of months, he might very well turn his campaign around and become the favorite to win the 2016 presidential nomination of his party.  As we see from the current crop of front runners, a lineup that was unimaginable just a short time ago, just about anything now seems possible (except for a Rand Paul victory).

So, what’s Gov. Christie’s road map to the nomination look like?  It’s based on three things.  (1) A collapse of confidence in the current three front runners.  (2) Growing concern that extremist conservatives are not electable in the general election.  (3) Consensus momentum among moderates and pragmatic conservatives that Gov. Christie is probably the most electable Republican in the race.  A final requirement, of course, is the Gov. Christie continue to stay active in the race and not commit any serious gaffes or blunders — which means saying nothing that will alienate conservatives.  Let’s remember that conservatives hold all the golden tickets to Willie Wankaville — the 2016 Republican National Convention in Cleveland.

That’s certainly a formidable gauntlet of prerequisites to overcome.  No doubt, Gov. Christie will need to catch a few big breaks, and then some.  But stranger things have happened so far in this race, and we haven’t even reached the first state caucus yet.  What kind of odds could you have gotten that the top three candidates in the race on the G.O.P. side right now would be Trump, Carson, and Fiorina?  That trifecta would have paid a fortune.  So nothing would seem out of the question.

Let’s break down this road map into greater detail:

(1) A collapse of confidence in the current three front runners — Right now, the three top candidates in national polls are Donald Trump, Ben Carson, and Carly Fiorina.  Their numbers combined, they are polling at about 55 percent of all Republicans.  Each is seriously flawed (quite possibly beyond repair) and would make for dream target for negative attack ads.  None has any previous political experience.  Moreover, each has committed multiple jaw-dropping gaffes which might play well among the far-Right, but which will ultimately sink any shot of making inroads with mainstream voters.  Most important, each one of these three candidates enjoys a fragment of the support that normally would go to someone like Gov. Christie — who is known to be an independent thinker, outspoken, folksy, and outside the normal G.O.P. political establishment.  If for any reason millions of Republicans don’t vote for any of the current trio, that leaves Christie to pick up the scraps.

(2) Growing concern that extremist conservatives are not electable in the general election — Assuming Trump, Carson, and Fiorina each collapse, that leaves Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, Mike Huckabee, Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, and Chris Christie as the only viable inheritors of the orphaned support.  Gov. Christie is probably best positioned as broad consensus choice, given what we know at this moment.  Obviously, here’s where he really needs a break, and that means the rest of the field must continue to both disappoint and underperform.  Despite support from much of the Republican establishment in terms of big endorsements, Jeb Bush has run a horrible campaign so far, and has proven to be a huge disappointment as a candidate on the national scene.  There’s legitimate concern Marco Rubio might not be ready for prime time, yet.  Sparking either Bush or Rubio, to date, has been like trying to light a wet firecracker.  Mike Huckabee might be a likable candidate and rally the base with his fiery social agenda, but he also has no real shot at the nomination.  Ted Cruz is probably the philosophical heart and soul of the party at the moment but also scares a lot of people.  Rand Paul has not been able to build upon the libertarian wing of the Republican Party initially carved out by his father (Ron Paul) during the previous two elections.  That leaves Gov. Christie as the moderate northeasterner who sounds a lot like Donald Trump when he talks, who connects with the working class, and who has governed somewhat effectively inside an overwhelmingly Democratic state as the only viable choice.  In other words, if Gov. Christie is the second or third choice of a majority, once the honeymoon wears off the three-headed monster named Trump-Carson-Fiorina, that might be enough to get him nominated.

(3) Consensus momentum among moderates and pragmatic conservatives that Gov. Christie is probably the most electable Republican in the race — If Republicans really want to win in 2016, Gov. Christie is probably their best shot at victory.  BridgeGate and overweight jokes aside, Gov. Christie is best suited to win independents and voters in the political center, who tend to swing big elections.  Regardless of who becomes the Democratic nominee, Republicans will need to nominate a candidate who isn’t widely viewed as ball and chained to the social agenda of the far Right.  Furthermore, the Republican nominee will need to win some measure of Blacks and Hispanics to get elected.  Even though it’s early, already in this campaign Republicans have alienated minorities even further (egregiously so), and continuing demographic shifts in America away from the groups who traditionally support the conservative candidate will make it even more mandatory that the G.O.P. nominee penetrate the flanks of the Democratic base.  In his two races for Governor of New Jersey, Christie has performed about as well as any Republican possibly can with independents and minorities.  If he can replicate that appeal nationally, he could probably defeat Hillary Clinton (or any other Democrat).

I don’t normally make it a habit to give out free advise to the political adversary.  Let’s hope Republicans don’t read this, and refuse to follow the logical course of events that might get their candidate elected to the White House.

However, if things do spin in a different direction and sanity is restored to the Republican Party accompanied by a recognition for pragmatism, we could see Gov. Christie walking onstage in Cleveland ten months from now as the Republican presidential nominee.

As we’ve seen already in this race, much stranger things have happened.