And then there were four — but really only two — viable challengers to Donald Trump for the Republican presidential nomination.
The only two candidates on stage at Wednesday night’s debate with a fighting chance of moving into the White House come 2025 are Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley.
Going into the evening, it seemed safe to assume that ex-New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Vivek Ramaswamy’s presences would only matter insofar as they added to or detracted from DeSantis and Haley’s performances.
At least one of the no-hopers made an example of those of us who underestimated him.
Both DeSantis and Haley, for their parts, turned in typically steady performances.
Haley was put on the defensive from the beginning, with both DeSantis and Ramaswamy pillorying her at just about every opportunity.
Ramaswamy, in his usual, intolerable way, spent his time trying to insult his way to relevance.
He asked Haley if his 3-year-old could help her identify America on a map, feverishly harangued her about the names of Ukrainian provinces, and held up a notepad with “NIKKI = CORRUPT” scribbled on it.
The former ambassador handled Ramaswamy’s attacks with grace, replying in the last instance that he just wasn’t worth her time.
She struggled a bit when it came to DeSantis’ more substantive attacks, however. Haley held her own, but didn’t come away unscathed.
On his own terms, DeSantis had a few strong moments, providing particularly sharp answers on gender transition treatments for minors and the fentanyl crisis.
Yet those moments were undermined by Christie, who rebuked him on multiple occasions for failing to answer questions directly.
And as for Christie, he enjoyed his finest hour. Indeed, he justified the very existence of his campaign — which had until then seemed quixotic at best and vain at worst — with his performance on Wednesday.
After being ignored for nearly the first 20 minutes of the debate, Christie rightly observed that the other candidates were avoiding bringing up Trump to the detriment of themselves and the voters.
“The truth needs to be told,” said Christie. “He [Trump] is unfit to be president and there is no bigger issue.”
Later, he savaged Ramaswamy — “the most obnoxious blowhard in America” — for insulting Haley, whom he praised as a “smart, accomplished woman” that he’d known for longer than Ramaswamy’s been a Republican.
The hard truths kept coming.
Christie cornered DeSantis for failing to directly answer whether Trump was fit for office, derided Trump as an “angry bitter man” looking out for his own interests, and observed that he was the only one on stage who refused to make excuses for or a victim of the GOP front-runner.
“If we deny reality as a party, we’re gonna have four more years of Joe Biden,” he warned.
In a more subtle moment, he said he would model his presidency after Ronald Reagan’s because the Gipper was a “slave to the truth.”
Make no mistake; Christie still has as much chance of prevailing in this race as Trump has of ever recognizing he lost his last one.
Perversely, he may even have hurt his standing in the party on Wednesday.
Yet he served an important and noble purpose in stating the irrefutable fact that it is imprudent of the party, and a danger to the country, to make Donald Trump the Republican nominee for president in 2024.
Christie may have sometimes presented that fact by way of a dig at Haley or DeSantis.
But if they would only open their eyes, they’d realize that he’s trying to help them wise up to the fact that Trump must be confronted head-on, and their audience wise up to his true nature.
For all his manifest, manifold faults, Republicans could learn a lot from Chris Christie.
Most of all his peers in the presidential primary.
Source link: https://nypost.com/2023/12/06/opinion/only-nikki-haley-and-ron-desantis-have-a-shot-at-defeating-donald-trump-for-gops-2024-nomination/