Christie's out

I eagerly await James Taranto's bye-ku on this one. In a certain respect I think Christie gets a bad rap from conservatives, but we'll get to that in a second. A governor who became a quick sensation for his willingness to lay it to public employee unions was unable - like all his fellow governors this time around - to appeal to the broader Republican electorate. And having thought a strong showing in New Hampshire would be his hope to gain some traction, a sixth-place, 7 percent showing leads to only one conclusion:

One of the sources familiar with the meeting said the New Jersey governor is a "political realist" and understood that not qualifying to appear in Saturday's debate and the lack of money made it impossible to go forward.

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Christie staked his hopes on New Hampshire, but he finished sixth on Tuesday night with just 7% of the vote. The source emphasized that some people "had left Christie for dead after the bridge incident and the fact that he was able to claw his way back into a competitive situation in New Hampshire shows how resilient of a candidate he was and how good of a campaign he had around him." Both sources familiar with the meeting said that it is unclear if Christie will endorse at this time, with one of them noting there is no reason to do so now.

A lot of conservatives never forgave Christie for his very public embrace of Obama after Hurricane Sandy. It came at the height of the 2012 campaign and right on the heels of a pretty darn good keynote address Christie had given - one that was in no way kind to Obama - at the RNC just weeks earlier. I think it was a bad rap. After Sandy hit, New Jersey needed federal aid, and Christie's first duty as governor was to take care of his state. Disrespecting a president who wanted to come and visit in the course of providing that aid would have been to jeopardize the well-being of his state for purely partisan reasons. I don't care how much you dislike Obama - Christie would be derelict in his duty if he acted that way.

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Now, you can certainly argue that he went further than was necessary with the hugs and all that, but I think that's just the way Christie is. I don't think he meant it as any sort of ideological embrace, but Christie is one of those people (and some of you may be troubled to know that I am too) for whom politics is not personal, and a literal or figurative embrace of a political opposite is neither a big deal nor any sort of partisan betrayal. I know there are other issues conservatives have with Christie, including his sometimes-public embrace of leading Muslims - although Christie's actually experience as a federal prosecutor on terror cases would - you'd think - trump that. These are days when optics matter more than a person's record, an observation I make without the slightest hint of approval. I'm disappointed in people for reacting so reflexively to the way things look and not investigating the way things really are. That's why the stupid "Bridgegate" story had any traction whatsoever. It looked bad. Never mind that it wasn't bad. This is not to necessary say that Christie was my choice, although I do see more value in a candidate's experience as a governor that many of the rest of you seem to. I don't think he was really prepared to make the changes we need on the tax code, spending, entitlements . . . I'd rather have a new president who's prepared to burn down some of those houses and start over and that never seemed like Christie's instinct to me. But I'm glad to have a guy like Christie on the scene. He's unafraid to give it back to liberal interest groups that most are afraid to take on - which is ironically the same thing a lot of you seem to like about Trump. I guess it's New Jersey's gain that his campaign ends today.

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