by Pa Rock
Citizen Conniver
Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, a man who is no political saint by anyone's standards, is set to officially announce his candidacy for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination in New Hampshire today. New Hampshire is significant to Christie if for no other reason than he sees it as a "must win" marker in his long-shot bid. for the White House - and New Hampshire is the state that ultimately turned on Christie and forced him out of the 2016 GOP presidential race.
After being soundly trashed by Donald Trump in 2016, Chris Christie went on to become a Trump acolyte and part-time adviser during the four awful years that Trump served as president. He finally broke ranks with Trump when the former president refused to acknowledge his defeat in the 2020 election.
So now Chris Christie is poised to get into the current race for the White House, and most news reports indicate that his "role" in that race will be that of a spoiler. The talk goes that Christie recognizes that he has little-to-no chance of actually winning the nomination, and that the plain-spoken and bellicose New Jersey pol will instead be focused on being a loose cannon whose aim is to bring down Trump - and perhaps Ron DeSantis as well. (Chris Christie reportedly became disenchanted with Ron DeSantis over the Florida governor's futile fight with Walt Disney World.)
But . . . in order to act as a human landmine in bringing down the party's two most severe autocrats, Christie will have to not only officially announce as a candidate - which he will do today - he must also meet the National Republican Party's high bar for making it onto the debate stage - the place where he can roar and ridicule with a guaranteed national audience. And making it onto the national debate stage will not be easy.
One criteria that the party set as a way to shuffle lesser-known candidates aside and off of the stage was a requirement that they tally at least one percent in three national polls that are recognized by the national party - or in two national polls and one legitimate state poll. (Just the "Bridgegate" scandal alone should have generated enough name recognition for Chris Christie to meet that criteria!)
But there are two other requirements that will be harder for the former governor of New Jersey to meet. One is a GOP demand that for a candidate to make it onto the debate stage, he or she must be able to show that they have 40,000 unique donors. (There is apparently no guidance on the size of those donations.) And the other necessity in order to gain access to the stage is that candidates must have a minimum of 200 unique donations from at least 20 individual states and territories.
(Republicans tend to be more comfortable in getting their donations in few big plops from rich guys like friends of Clarence and Ginni Thomas, or from super pacs. Begging person-to-person has traditionally not been their forte.)
But the National Republican Party apparently now thinks that it's important to have a wide donor base, and if Chris Christie wants to have a big, public go at Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis, he will have to make some major inroads with some of the more common folk who occupy the lower echelons of his party.
And that is where rude Democrats could have an impact.
I'm thinking very seriously about sending Chris Christie a dollar. That wouldn't even be enough to add an extra strip of bacon to his breakfast double-burger, but it would make me one unique donor of the 40,000 that Christie will need to get onto that debate stage, and it would be one unique donor from Missouri, a state where New Jersey politicians are not necessarily well known or respected - except, obviously, for Mr. Toad of Bedminster.
Of course, some might argue that giving any amount of money to a Republican, regardless of how small the donation is, would be political heresy and the equivalent of intentionally stepping on a banana peel while traversing the slippery slope to hell.
And God Herself knows that Republicans never interfere in Democratic politics.
Somebody probably needs to start talking me down!
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