The presence of Chris Christie in the presidential race has made it all-but-impossible for me to pay as little attention to it as I'd hoped I could. Once upon a time in a land far, far away, one-time governor Christie was on my short list of "Republicans I could imagine myself voting for." He was not on that list for long. Once I saw a little more of him, I realized I liked him for his entertainment value and because, like too many in both parties, he saw the wisdom in occasionally confessing to a mistake or admitting a weakness in his party. Unfortunately, when you brushed all that aside, he was still Chris Christie.
It was interesting to see him getting booed at the Faith and Freedom Conference the other day for criticizing Trump. I got the feeling that the booers didn't disagree with what he said. I got the feeling what they were saying was, "We know all that! But what you don't understand, you moron, is that we want to win!"
That's why they'll ignore the many lies and misdeeds of their guy: Because of all the candidates for the Republican nomination, he's the one who even if he winds up campaigning wearing an ankle bracelet, stands a better chance than Pence, Haley, Ramaswamy, Hutchinson, Scott, DeSantis, Durgum, Suarez, Hurd and especially Mr. Christie. All of them can pledge to ban abortion, cut taxes, police our borders, Make America Great Again, etc. Only one of them looks like he could win.
You can't beat something with nothing. I put that in boldface because I think we too often forget that. Most folks who support Trump are not going to abandon him until they have a viable alternative…and none of the others in the current bag o' candidates fills that need. Eventually, a few indictments from now, someone might if only by default. In the meantime, Christie's Trump-bashing is awfully entertaining and pretty accurate. It's just that a lot of people don't want to hear it because they have no one else to rally behind and, y'know, they want to win.