Chris Christie Can’t Explain Why He’s Still Running for President

Why is he still running? Good question. Photo: Mel Musto/Bloomberg via Getty Images

As the voting phase of the 2024 Republican presidential nominating contest grows nigh, there are two things we can assert with iron certainty: (1) unless some rival very quickly knocks him off his stride, Donald Trump will be the nominee (barring some weird scenario wherein he’s carried off to jail in leg irons before the convention in Milwaukee), and (2) this theoretically formidable Trump rival will not be Chris Christie.

Based on current polling and the front-loaded nature of primaries and delegate awards, Trump’s campaign credibly predicts he will clinch the nomination on March 19. His one Achilles’ heel could be in New Hampshire, a poor state for him demographically and one where Nikki Haley has surged into a reasonably strong second place in every recent poll. New Hampshire also happens to be Christie’s best state, relatively speaking. But he has approximately zero chance of becoming the GOP nominee given his very high unfavorable ratings among Republican voters everywhere, much of it attributable to his exceptional hostility to Trump (whom he says he won’t support in a general election).

Adding these factors together, it’s obvious to virtually everyone that Christie’s continued presence in the race can only help his archenemy. And making this even more obvious is that Christie really cannot make a coherent argument for his own candidacy at this point. This became very clear during a Thursday interview Christie did with conservative pundit Hugh Hewitt, who methodically went through the logic dictating a withdrawal by the former New Jersey governor:

HH: The only way Donald Trump isn’t the nominee is if somebody else beats him in Iowa and/or New Hampshire. I think that’s just — if he wins those two, he’s the nominee. Is that true?

Christie filibustered with vague talk about living in “unprecedented times” and discussed Trump’s many legal challenges without acknowledging that the odds of any of them preventing his nomination are limited. So Hewitt bore down:

It seems to me at this point, given the urgency in the world and the timing of the campaign, that the amount of spectrum left for major changes as the campaign has gone to almost zero, absent a natural event of some sort that I don’t wish on anybody, and that therefore, Chris Christie, if Nikki Haley loses New Hampshire by 5 percent and you’ve got 10 percent or more, you will have elected Donald Trump president. Are you okay with that?

Christie tried to deflect the question by assailing the reliability of polls with some very non-germane reference to Hillary Clinton in 2016, before admitting to Hewitt that his own campaign relies on polls. So Hewitt got more granular:

HH: Let me reframe the question, Governor Christie. Does your data show that a significant number of Christie voters would vote for Nikki Haley or Ron DeSantis if you dropped out?

CC: Yes.

HH: Okay. Point taken.

In this interview and elsewhere, Christie has described himself as irreplaceable since he is the only candidate willing to go after Trump directly. But he doesn’t explain why he couldn’t go after Trump just as effectively as a very well known noncandidate who could surely command cameras and microphones in New Hampshire working hand in glove with anti-Trump governor Chris Sununu (who has endorsed Haley). If Christie weren’t running himself, of course, the risk that he might help Trump by taking votes away from vastly more viable rivals would drop to near zero.

If Christie cannot defend his candidacy now, how will he do so the day after Iowa, when there will be just eight days before New Hampshire votes? Particularly if Haley finishes second ahead of Ron DeSantis in Iowa and (likely) ends his candidacy, a thousand loud Establishment Republican voices will scream at Christie to get out of the race instantly and give the former South Carolina governor a clean shot at the champ. Christie should probably come up with an answer well in advance.