Chris Christie is the only Republican running against Donald Trump

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Wednesday morning with another new entrant in the 2024 Republican presidential nominating contest: former vice president Mike Pence.

Pence, students of history will recall, served as Donald Trump’s vice president. He cited this victory on his campaign website, of course, as follows: Vice President Pences record of legislative and executive experience, and his strong values ​​of family that motivated President Trump to choose Mike Pence as his running mate in July 2016. They were elected by the American people on November 8, 2016 and entered office on January 20, 2017.

And that, as they say, that. The biography jumps to February 2021 after some unpleasant events last month.

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The excellent video in which Pence made his candidacy official didn’t add any energy to the former president. It mentions that he is vice president, but not for whom. However, most of it was just the familiar pastiche of stock video clips of Americana, which Pence showed next to smiling people and news headlines that presented a dark picture of the moment. The rhetoric of former vice presidents sometimes competes to hear the orchestra’s high score, perhaps an unwitting admission that the latter is more compelling.

Pence is at a disadvantage by stepping onto the national stage as Trumps straight man. No one buys a ticket to see a straight man perform by himself. Especially when the straight guy refuses to articulate why his solo show would be better.

To get the metaphor out of the way, that Pence didn’t actually cite why he’s a better candidate than his former boss is a glaring failure. He, like others in the race, thinks that maybe they can somehow overtake Trump in the polls while still patting the former president on the back. In fact, they think they have to do it. And maybe they’re right.

But Pences announcement easily compares to former New Jersey governor Chris Christies, which took place at a townhall-style event in New Hampshire on Tuesday night.

Now we have pretenders around us who want to tell you, Pick me because I like what you picked before, but less crazy, Christie said at one point. But I don’t want to say his name because, for these other pretenders, he is for those of you who read the Harry Potter books like Voldemort, he is he-who-shall-not-be-named.

This came just after Christie disparaged one of his opponents by saying that a sad, self-willed, self-serving mirror hog is not a leader.

Let me clarify, he continued: The person I’m talking to is obsessed with the mirror, who doesn’t admit mistakes, doesn’t admit guilt, and always looks for someone else and someone else to blame for whatever is wrong but can be found. every reason to take credit for anything right is Donald Trump.

From above, this is what Christie promises his audience. He leans into the Jersey shtick, approaches Bruce Springsteen and assures the crowd that he’s willing to take down his opponents and even challenge them when they get a chance to ask him questions. He said it was something he learned when first running in his home state.

What we found was that people said, yeah, he’s a bully, he explained. He is a bully to us.

Interestingly, that framing mirrors how Trump frames his own political efforts: He wields slings and arrows on behalf of normal Americans. It’s a surprisingly effective argument, one that has allowed Trump to present things like federal investigations into his retention of classified documents as somehow about the FBI hating blue-collar retirees.

Christies’ repeated point is that Trump’s real interest is only in himself.

Eight years ago, he said of Trumps bluster and aggression, it was hilarious. Eight years ago, you were comforted. I forgive you, but it’s not fun anymore. It’s not fun anymore. It’s no longer entertaining. This is the last throes of a bitter angry man who wants power back for himself, not for you.

This is absolutely true, of course. The lesson of the past eight years should be the fact that Trump’s central focus is his own staying power, from his focus on delivering policy victories only to those he views as essential to winning elections to period after the election where he lied. about the fraud was a vehicle for him to try to block the election of Joe Biden.

Christie frames his candidacy as a response to Americans’ tendency to become more insular and make their worlds smaller and more comfortable. Trumps divisiveness, he argued, exacerbated that effect. (He also appeared on Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), saying that we have candidates for president who talk about issues so small that sometimes it’s hard to even understand them.)

Trump responded to Christies remarks about pettiness by laughing at former governors.

Christians’ dismissals of Trump are not limited to his personality. He blamed Trump for increasing border migration, because Trump promised to build a wall that was never completed (Mexico paid less). He criticized the Trumps family, including the multibillion-dollar investment Jared Kushner received from Saudi interests. He compared Trump’s position on Ukraine to that of disgraced British prime minister Neville Chamberlain. He even accused Trump of lying when he told voters in 2016 that he wouldn’t play golf as president.

There was an unmistakable sense of personal animosity that underpinned the speech, precisely, the sort of thing that led observers to suggest that Christies real aim in a race that was unlikely to be won was simply to do everything in his power to hobble Trump. He also has a response to this.

Christie doesn’t really care about winning. All he cares about is destroying Trump, Christie said. Now, I have something to ask you. How are those two things mutually exclusive?

The reason I’m going after Trump is twofold, he added. One, he deserves it. And two, this is the way to win.

These are the things to say when launching a campaign, of course. Christian’s rejection of the idea that there are Trump voters (noting that he, too, voted for Trump twice) is quite clear in the challenge he faces, as is his criticism that Trump is in a number right in mid-2015. What happened after that point was that Trump’s pugilistic style, attacking Republicans and the left alike as he jockeyed for power, built a large, sustained, loyal core of support which is a major obstacle to Christies and everyone else.

But Christie, unlike his opponents and unlike Trump’s former vice president, won’t worry about leaving that core.

It was a mistake in 2016 not to confront Donald Trump early because I knew that most of what he said was complete baloney, Christie said in New Hampshire. I thought that something so obvious to me would be obvious to everyone. Let me guarantee you one thing: I’m not making mistakes this time.

That alone sets him apart in this field. But it’s also likely to fall victim to something Christie himself pointed out, that we always get politics wrong when we run into the next election through the prism of the latter.

The best time to intervene in Trump’s dishonest, aggressive presentation to voters was, in fact, in 2016. Now, his core support has spent eight years building defenses against arguments that Trump is lying. or only interested in himself. Trying to convince them that Trump is not who they have convinced themselves he is is a very difficult task.

To his credit, Christie was at least willing to try.

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