Chris Christie Enters 2024 Presidential Race Poised to Take on Role of ‘Trump Slayer’
Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has made it official: he’s running for the GOP presidential nomination in 2024. Christie
Ivy Griffith
Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has made it official: he’s running for the GOP presidential nomination in 2024.
Christie filed paperwork today making it official, and he now throws his hat into an increasingly congested GOP field eyeing the big spot to face off against the Democratic nominee, expected to be President Joe Biden.
But Christie is trying an approach that the other candidates have stayed away from: he’s tackling Trump head on.
Other candidates have a variety of different approaches; Mike Pence has entered as the traditional conservative; Nikki Haley has entered as the conservative woman who embraces a MAGA lite philosophy; Ron DeSantis is setting himself up as an extremist answer to MAGA nation’s concerns over Trump, and nobody’s really sure what Tim Scott is planning to bill himself as.
But Christie, who made an unimpressive showing of himself in the 2016 Presidential primaries, is coming out swinging.
Over the past few years, he’s set himself up in staunch opposition to everything Trump.
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Unfiltered and unbothered by Trump’s insults, Christie has set himself up as a commonsense alternative to Republicans who like a go-getter but tire of Trump’s unending controversies.
In fact, he’s a veritable “Trump slayer,” as the New York Times dubbed him this week.
Or at least, he has the potential to be. Christie doesn’t back away from a fight, and is known for facing down Trump without blinking – a quality even DeSantis seems to lack.
Jon Bramnick, a Republican state senator, told The New York Times this week, that a one-on-one debate between Christie and Trump “would have more viewers than the Super Bowl.”
He added, “Trump may be able to call you a name. But Christie will take that name, twist it and come back with three or four things that will leave Trump lying down waiting for the count.”
Will Christie branding himself as the anti-Trump candidate help or hurt?
Among the MAGA supporters who swelled Trump’s poll numbers in 2016 and 2020, Christie has almost no chance of a win.
But among Republicans who find Trump exhausting, Ron DeSantis a little too extreme, and Mike Pence uninspiring – Christie could find a niche and ride it to the general.
Additionally, there’s the mega donor factor.
So far, mega donors have shied away from supporting the polarizing Trump and DeSantis, and they’re looing for the right horse to back in 2024. A horse who can woo both hardline Republicans and Independents in the general election. Someone who is electable.
The New York Times reports, “In interviews with New Jersey voters, Mr. Christie’s assets and liabilities were repeatedly described as two sides of the same coin.
To moderates thirsty for a centrist voice: He is not Mr. Trump.
And to Trump loyalists who might prefer that Mr. Christie retreat permanently to his beach house in Bay Head, it was much the same refrain: He is not Mr. Trump.”
And that could well be the long and short of it.
Is “Not Trump” enough to win?
Christie is banking on it.