The Chris Christie Decision

A week from tomorrow, Republican Chris Christie will win reelection as governor of New Jersey in an epic landslide.  Despite the state’s strong blue tilt and the Democrats nominating a respectable challenger, Christie will likely win almost all demographics; he will see great numbers with younger voters, female voters, and Latino voters.  He’s popular amongst Republicans, Independents, and even many Democrats in the Garden State.  He’s only 51, and has one of the most prominent national profiles of any Republican politician, and generally does better than almost any other Republican in head-to-heads with Hillary Clinton, the Democratic frontrunner for 2016.

So why isn’t Chris Christie the done deal that Hillary Clinton is for the Republican nomination?  I know that Clinton is obviously more famous and already has a national network in place, but the Republican Party has historically always gone with the best potential candidate in their primaries.  In 1996, they had the possibility of going with Pat Buchanan or Steve Forbes, but pragmatism led them to Bob Dole.  In 2008, they skipped the Southern preacher/governor with a hard right social conservative platform in favor of the war hero senator.  In 2012, when their field was compromised of Larry, Curly, Moe, and Newt, they made the best of a bad situation by going with a blue-state governor with a strong business resume.  Bob Dole, John McCain, and Mitt Romney were not successful nominees, but they were the best nominees that ran in those respective years.  So why does it seem like the GOP is abandoning the man who clearly has the best shot of beating the seemingly unstoppable Hillary Clinton?

To be fair, the GOP primaries haven’t started yet, but you can already start to see Chris Christie being shunned by the party.  Christie, despite being the next chair of the RGA, wasn’t invited to the high profile CPAC earlier this year.  The base seems more concerned with their flavors of the month (currently Ted Cruz, previously Rand Paul, Paul Ryan, and Marco Rubio).  Christie has been called a RINO and an Obama-lover by the Tea Party movement, despite him having relatively hardline conservative views (I would argue that he’s one of those Republicans who personally is in favor of gay marriage even if he isn’t publicly, but he’s maintained a pretty harsh stance on the issue publicly and that’s about the only issue that he’s really a “moderate” on).

The Republican Party desperately needs Chris Christie to be their nominee, though, in 2016, and I think they all know it.  Looking at 2012, with President Obama enjoying middling approval numbers, he still won the electoral college with stunning ease-for all of the talk about how close Ohio, Virginia, Colorado, and Pennsylvania could be, you know what state ended up being closer than all of them?  North Carolina, which is being referred to as a red state again by the media despite Obama losing by just over two points in the state.  Barack Obama could have lost Ohio, Florida, and Virginia (the three closest states that went blue) and still won the election.  While Republicans can and are still competitive in these states, the full force of the Republican Party barely put a dent in the President’s electoral college margins: Mitt Romney only picked up two states that John McCain lost, and North Carolina was a pretty thin victory.  Looking at 2013, where Terry McAuliffe is trouncing Ken Cuccinelli in Virginia, a pivotal 2016 state, you can see what’s at stake here.  If a social, Tea Party conservative cannot beat Terry McAuliffe (a massively underwhelming candidate), how are they going to beat Hillary Clinton, someone who will be gunning for the title of first female President and who enjoys a strong national profile (and will have the successful operations of both her husband and her former boss to rely on to make a win a reality)?

The reality, is you can’t.  Rand Paul, Paul Ryan, Marco Rubio, and Ted Cruz won’t be the president of the United States in 2016 barring some sort of unforeseen catastrophe from the Obama administration or from the Clintons themselves.  Chris Christie is the only name being bandied around by Republicans who has the anti-Washington profile and the blue state bona fides to win over moderate voters in Ohio, Virginia, Florida, and Pennsylvania to make the White House red in 2016.  How he ends up faring in the presidential primaries in two years time will say a lot about how much the Republican leadership wants the party to grow its base in the coming decades.