How Chris Christie Got to Be the Hero and the Petty Politician All at Once

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

75% : South Carolina Republicans love Trump.
68% : Most Republicans love Trump, which is why he's the commanding front-runner in the Republican presidential primary.
66% : Individual polls vary, but the average gap between Haley and Trump in the state almost exactly matches Christie's level of support there -- and Haley is the overwhelming second choice of Christie voters.
46% : Haley has surged in New Hampshire, becoming the first candidate to get within something resembling striking distance of Trump in any early nominating contest.
40% : He's been almost as vituperative toward Sununu since the governor's Haley endorsement as he has been to Trump.
40% : If Haley peters out and falls in line behind Trump, Christie can say I told you so; if she pulls off the upset of the decade, he can take his fair share of credit.
38% : There are vanishingly few scenarios in which Trump is not the 2024 Republican presidential nominee.
33% : The element of truth is that Haley may well just be angling for vice president and won't use everything in her arsenal to try to beat Trump.
30% : Where Christie's argument fell short, though, was that there was no better option to stopping Trump than betting it all on the potential double agent.
24% : He portrayed himself as the only candidate willing to tell the truth about Trump -- that he was a dangerous con man, a buffoon unfit for the presidency.
21% : But there was an element of truth to the public argument he was making against Haley: that she was ultimately angling to be Trump's running mate and wouldn't risk torching that opportunity by doing what it took to beat Trump.
16% : He promised to take it directly to Trump on the debate stage in a way that other candidates, who agreed with him privately but were too scared of Trump's base to voice it, wouldn't.
16% : "I would be happy to get out of the way for someone who is actually running against Donald Trump," Christie said at a Tuesday town hall in New Hampshire.
11% : What Christie ensured by dropping out, though, was that if Haley lost New Hampshire by a handful of points, he wouldn't go down in history as the "anti-Trump" candidate who blocked off the last best chance to stop Donald Trump in the 2024 Republican presidential primary.
10% : When Trump opted not to participate in the debates, Christie trained his fire instead on direct Trump proxy muppets (Vivek Ramaswamy) and the cowards who strained not to mention Trump at all (everyone else).

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