Is Joe Biden or Chris Christie The Real MAGA Candidate?
Why I prefer the town hall to the stadium
I want to salute Jeff Giesea on a great column on why he’s supporting Joe Biden.
If you look at policy substance instead of rhetoric, and material benefits instead of tribal signifiers, Biden is advancing Trump’s 2016 rhetorical promises more than Trump himself.
I like President Biden and I will likely support him in 2024. There’s something about him — aged but still in the arena — that’s hard to ignore. He’s competing. The contrast between head boy Rishi Sunak (43) and seasoned pol Biden (80) was evident. Biden getting Sunak’s name wrong on the first visit and his title wrong on his second was because Biden knows Sunak doesn’t have staying power.
Both DeSantis and Trump are disqualifying. DeSantis steals from pensioners to reward his friends who lose money. Trump sells out secrets to foreigners. Not good! Not presidential!
But I’m not yet ready to throwaway the Republican Party altogether (though it certainly deserves it!) Candidly it seems irresponsible not to try to fix both—or even all—parties, especially when President Biden is well into his 80s by 2024.
We should double back and rescue who we can if we can. We should cut a deal with those of us who are open to alternatives to Trump and Trumpism. Who better than a prosecutor to get a deal? Perhaps that’s the real Art of the Deal.
I’ve elsewhere made the case for Chris Christie which I will flesh out in subsequent posts and what I think a Christie national policy might look like. It’s a bit silly, to be sure, as it seems likely that Biden will win reelection and Christie is polling only two percent. Still, you have to start somewhere and with Stevie Cohen’s largesse who knows how far Christie can go?
Voting for Christie corrects a number of wrongs that took place during the Trump presidency. Christie really should have been Vice President and his transition plan would have worked. Christie would have placed General Peter Pace as National Security Advisor and not the very compromised Michael Flynn who Christie warned against.
Yes, it should have been Vice President Christie not Mike Pence. That much was clear when we watched Pence’s lackluster campaign announcement. Pence wasn’t the guy. He isn’t the guy. He couldn’t win reelection in Indiana. He’s meeting with Canadian frauds like Jordan Peterson. I won’t go so far as to call him a closeted homosexual — Dave Chappelle already did that — but you know the type. He failed the Indiana bar repeatedly.
Chris Christie isn’t the “Bible guy… he’s from New Jersey” but then again neither was Trump. Evangelical power is waning in America as the death of Pat Robertson made all too clear. But what about a Christian ethos? Is that gone too?
Well, Christie’s defense of providing aid and comfort to Trump is actually pretty Christian. In the Bible Daniel eventually became second in command by providing counsel and interpreting the dreams of King Darius. We are all of us called to be servants of our leaders and to try to minister to them however flawed or infirm they may be.
Christie’s campaign, I think, portends a larger shift. America has shifted from the world’s policeman to the world’s prosecutor. Those who help the prosecutors make their case will long endure.
I’m here to hear him prosecute the case against Jared Kushner which careful observers have noticed he’s been doing for a long while.
“The grift from this family is breathtaking” and I’m counting on “Big Boy” to give us a full accounting.
He’s doing just that in that most American of formats — the town hall.
And while Trump may have stadiums I’m betting that the man who mixes it up with his fellow citizens might make it to an end game with The Donald.