Don’t Rule Out Chris Christie Just Yet
By Chris Freind
About the only job better than weatherman –
where you can get it wrong half the time and still remain employed – is
political pundit. These guys make an art out of looking dumb, and doing
so with authority.
In the last few years alone, we have been told
that Obama had zero chance of beating Hillary Clinton, Mitt Romney was
sure to be the GOP nominee in 2008, and now, the President can’t win
re-election because Romney will beat him. That last prediction, of
course, is predicated upon Romney winning the Republican nomination,
which the pundit brain trust is now telling us is a done deal after
Mitt’s victory in Florida.
But just as it wasn’t over when the
Germans bombed Pearl Harbor, as Blutarsky taught us in ‘Animal House,’
this race is far from over.
And the most comedic part is that the
“experts” don’t even know it. If they just took a walk outside their
ivory towers, they would discover that there are still many elections –
not coronations – yet to come, and that Newt Gingrich hasn’t been
vanquished.
This is not to say that Romney won’t end up the
winner. In fact, that’s a good bet since he has money and organization
advantages over Gingrich. But to say it’s all but over is simply
foolish.
Cutting through the pundits’ white noise, it is worth
looking at where the race really stands. Never before have there been
three different winners in the first three contests, so that alone
should be a caution sign for traditional predictions. Mitt Romney has
won two of the four contests, including the winner-take-all state of
Florida, and yet the total number of delegates awarded so far amounts to
just 5 percent.
Ron Paul and Rick Santorum, for various reasons,
cannot win the nomination, but they can and will garner delegates, as
many states award delegates on a proportional basis based on popular
vote.
Without question, Gingrich will be in the hunt for the long
haul. Following a disappointing fifth-place finish in New Hampshire,
after which the “experts” wrote him off for good, he roared back to a
thundering victory in South Carolina. In all likelihood, he will win a
number of states on Super Tuesday, and in the contests that he doesn’t,
will post strong second-place finishes.
(There is another reason
for Gingrich to stay in the race: the possibility that Romney will say
or do something that would catastrophically implode his candidacy. Mitt
came close this week when he said “I’m not concerned about the very poor
…You can focus on the very poor, that’s not my focus.” Such blunders
run in the family, as his father, former Michigan Gov. George, crushed
his quite viable presidential aspirations by stating he was
“brainwashed” into supporting the Vietnam War. The game was over the
very instant he uttered that word.)
Short of a Romney implosion,
Gingrich won’t win the nomination outright, but the impact of his
candidacy could be substantially greater: he may deny Romney the prize.
If the three “challengers” to Romney can keep Mitt from attaining that
“50 percent plus one” number, it’s a whole new ballgame.
And while such a scenario was unthinkable to many pundits just a few weeks ago, it is becoming increasingly plausible.
An
often overlooked but extremely important factor in determining the
nominee is that many of the states have different legal rules concerning
their delegates. A handful of states, including delegate-rich
Pennsylvania, do NOT require their delegates to commit for the candidate
who won the state. Put in layman’s terms, come convention time,
delegates from the Keystone State can cast votes for any person they
wish, whether or not the candidate won the state or even participated in
the primary process.
Obviously, in normal election years, party
unity is assured because the nominee is determined early in the process.
But this year is anything but normal. And there is precedent for
delegates breaking ranks.
In 1980, George H.W. Bush handily won
the primary election in Pennsylvania over Ronald Reagan. The Reagan
folks knew they weren’t going to win, so they pulled a coup by ensuring
that the delegates elected were loyal to The Gipper. So despite Bush
winning by 100,000 votes, Reagan emerged with roughly 70 percent of the
state’s delegates morally committed to him.
Given that situation,
a major concern for Romney is getting the right delegates to achieve
the right majority. But since Mitt has been running for president for
five years, spent hundreds of millions in that endeavor, and still can’t
come close to getting 50 percent of GOP primary voters, that might be a
daunting task.
While still a “long shot” scenario, don’t be
surprised that, after all the states have voted, no one emerges a
winner. If neither Romney nor Gingrich can successfully make a deal with
Paul or Santorum to acquire their delegates, the country may see two
men who despise each other hold a joint press conference announcing
that, for the good of the Party, they are withdrawing from the campaign
and releasing their delegates.
And then it would become the Wild
West. Backroom conventioneering would take on a life of its own, with
countless deals being struck to choose the most unifying Republican
ticket to take on Obama.
And who might top that list? Well, put
it this way. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie would do well to start using
a treadmill. More than anyone else, Christie’s ability to tell it like
it is, take no prisoners, and bulldog his way to success – despite major
Democratic majorities in the state assembly – make him a party
favorite. He is one of a very few who commands respect by the
Establishment, rank-and-file grassroots activists, and Tea Parties
alike.
Republicans, Democrats and Independents may not always
agree with Christie, but they always know where he stands, and his
speak-from-the-heart style is a breath of fresh air in a world of sound
bites, talking points and focus groups.
Christie may have
foreseen this scenario, possibly explaining why he declined to run in
the brutal primaries. And for those who predict Christie as a Romney VP,
forget it. He is nobody’s Number Two, and almost certainly would not
sign on to a meaningless ceremonial post when he could have, quite
possibly, captured the top prize for himself had he wanted to do so.
Should Christie decline an offer
made at a brokered convention, the list of frontline candidates grows
relatively thin, but undoubtedly Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, Virginia
Gov. Bob McDonnell and, dare we say it – Jeb Bush! – would certainly be
in play.
This scarcity of good candidates is testament to what
happens when a political party refuses to build its bench with folks who
actually believe in things, instead promoting those whose “turn it is.”
Look no further than Bob Dole and John McCain. It’s pretty sad that in
the election many Republicans are calling the most important in American
history, the GOP can muster so few viable contenders.
No matter
how it eventually plays out, the battle for the Republican nomination
will go on for at least the next four months, and that’s a good thing.
Despite the conventional wisdom as postulated by pundits that divisive
primaries only serve to weaken the party’s candidates and needlessly
give an advantage to the opponent, the opposite is true. Combative and
lengthy primaries make candidates stronger, sharper and better prepared
for the rigors of a general election presidential campaign. Barack Obama
proved that in his protracted battle with Hillary.
And given
that Obama is in the driver’s seat to emerge victorious in November, a
long primary season – and even a brokered convention – could be just
what the doctor ordered to energize the Republican Party and unify what
is now a very discontented base.
President Christie, anyone?
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