Time to go, Chris
Chris Christie can make amends for 2016 by dropping out and endorsing Haley for 2024.
I’ll say it: Nikki Haley has a chance of beating Donald Trump for the 2024 Republican Presidential nomination. I probably jinxed it with that opening sentence, but she really does.
It is a small chance. The odds might be about the same as Jim Carrey’s chances of scoring with Lauren Holly in Dumb and Dumber. It might be about the same as the 2023 Chicago Bears’ likelihood of winning the Super Bowl.
This poll from New Hampshire still shows Trump with a sizable lead, and the “Live Free or Die” state always kind of goes its own way, as illustrated by Trump polling at almost 60% in Iowa.
But I’m feeling traces of this weird emotion called “hope” which I thought had been thoroughly beaten out of me by eight years of MAGA dominance in the Republican Party. (Not to mention almost four decades of being a Chicago Bears fan.)
Donald Trump still leads in New Hampshire, but Nikki Haley has consolidated much of the non-Trump vote and has emerged as the top alternative to him there. Among the top candidates, Haley gets the best marks on being seen as "likable" and "reasonable," and she runs nearly even with Trump on being "prepared" — notable, considering he held the presidency. She has been running in part on electability and is now seen as the most electable of Trump's challengers.
[…]
Haley has been given a boost by New Hampshire's more moderate electorate relative to Iowa. She has made inroads among self-described moderates and independents, running close to Trump among them now. (Independents can, and often do, vote in the GOP primary.) And it's these groups who express more openness, in principle, to a candidate dissimilar to Trump, if he isn't the nominee.
Asked to compare the candidates to the frontrunner, voters see Haley as the most different candidate from Trump in terms of personality. And about seven in 10 say that if the nominee is not Trump, they would prefer a candidate different than him in terms of personality.
When voters are asked which candidates they are at least considering, Haley and Chris Christie get some overlap — most of those considering Christie are also considering Haley. But Christie suffers from more negative evaluations, with few describing him as likable, prepared, or reasonable. And most see him as a long shot to beat Biden.
All of a sudden, Haleymentum looks like it might kinda maybe possibly be real.
While we’re at it, I’ll give Chris Christie some credit. He’s hung around longer than I expected, and polling in double digits (even barely) in any Republican primary, after he publicly betrayed the Great Leader, is an achievement in itself.
It was Christie whose abrupt withdrawal from the 2016 nomination race, and endorsement of Trump for the Presidency, opened the floodgates for the MAGA takeover. That’s quite the burden to have on your conscience, and running a doomed 2024 protest candidacy against him isn’t enough to wash away the stain.
It doesn’t help that this was the best anti-Trump zinger he got off during any of the debates:
No one is completely beyond redemption, though. Even Adolf Hitler killed Hitler, carrying out the wishes of all these time travelers who tried to murder him in childhood.
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