Shortly ago, @peterrobinson moderated a debate between on the one hand, the Once and Future President, God-Emperor of the United States Donald Trump — and on the other hand, perennial bridesmaid Chris Christie.

Despite literally mailing in his performance, Trump swept the crowd.  The YouTube video here had 21 comments at the time of this article, and they broke out as 13 for Trump, 2 for Christie, and 6 either off-topic or off-medication.  The comments on the Ricochet post similarly showed a clear preference for Trump, even when controlling for the repeat count of some excitable commenters.

What’s that you say, Lassie?  This wasn’t a debate?  It was just Peter Robinson bulling through a head cold to interview Chris Christie?  And that despite the fact that Trump’s name was brought up more than Biden’s, Obama’s, Robinson’s, or even Christie’s himself, the topic wasn’t actually supposed to be Trump?  Well, your math may be off, but I certainly take your point.  Good dog.  Run along now.

Huh.  So @Peter Robinson recently interviewed Christie.  I’m still trying to figure out how Christie lost the thing but nobody won.  Some people are just losers.  Sad!

Why is Christie running against Trump on China, with nothing to say about Biden? Christie says that Trump “threw bouquets” at China.   Sure — he did so *while beating them in a trade war*, which Robinson did point out a moment later.  Christie said Trump’s position was ‘Trust China” on COVID, yet I think we all recall that Trump had to fight Rs and Ds alike to restrict travel from obviously contagious China.

When I’m dealing with a project manager across the fence, I also say “I trust that PM to produce the desired results and the required reports.” Because nobody on the other side of the fence works for me! That’s a polite way of saying “When you F this up, it’s not on me,” which is the right answer when you have no authority over a loosely connected party.  Nobody in China worked for Trump (certainly none of the self-soothing apparatus of the State Department, much less Xi Jinping and the butchers), so Trump was right to express confidence in China’s ability to handle China’s own problem *while he obviously took care of business here*.  Funny, I didn’t hear Christie talk about Nanny Pelosi urging people to go to Chinatown and eat Asiatic food to prove they’re not racists.

I don’t expect Robinson to go all Project Veritas on Chris Christie — not at this early stage of the game. I figure his role is to help the Rs set up franchises wherever they want. We are pre-Primary at this point, and if we’re going to pretend that elections still matter, then this seems sound.

Chris Christie bunted on gay marriage, punted on abortion, and is running against Trump on China.  Who says he’s no good at sports? 

Back to COVID.  Robinson asked Christie about COVID, and set the table with quotes from Biden and Fauci. Christie went straight to Orange Man Bad, then said “we have a 65% vax rate without mandates.” I am not interested in the sort of quibble that makes the current oppressive, suffocating vax regime somehow not “mandates”.  Christie says he doesn’t think the gummint should issue mandates, but has no problem with employers doing so.

“Employers set terms and conditions of employment all the time.”  I’ll sidestep the obvious things that employers are not even allowed to ask about, but combine this with his earlier talk about there not being mandates in place currently, and he’s just signing off on the OSHA/CDC/federal-and-contractor instruments of coercion.  You get it?  No problem with the way things are going now, but plenty to say about Trump.  (Gosh, I could swear he was just here!)

When asked about woke-ism, Christie explains why we no longer use the term “negro” in general.  But he gets it WRONG!  He says it’s because “African-American people would be offended by the term, and would prefer another term.”  But that’s not why the term went away. That is a MISERABLE reason to do or not do anything. I’m totally okay with the idea that we no longer use the term negro because it was plastered about like the word colored in official usage to effect among other thing Jim Crow laws. The point is not that it’s offensive (or not) to this group or that, but that it rings too richly with a “legal” denial of equality under the law. Not because some feelings are hurt. There’s a difference.

This bodes ill for Christie’s approach to the whole category of woke problems.  He doesn’t have the right foundation from which to think, much less argue.  His foundation for opposing wokeness is just a restatement, slightly diminished, of the woke agenda.

Progressivism doing the speed limit is not Conservatism.

And woke, by the way, is not new.  Woke is PC, is Goodthink, is the Party Line.  Cancel Culture is denunciations, is show trials.  We have seen this all before, and we have seen men like Christie who fail to learn, or just don’t care.

Finally, somewhere in the seasick final fifteen minutes — hatin’ on Trump and barely mentioning Biden or any other Democrat (odd, in the midst of a disastrous Democrat administration)  — he defends the democrat steal, while blaming Trump for not stopping it.  He uses neutral terms for Democrats, and is critical only of Trump — and of noted Educatrix Jill Biden, for “forcing her husband” to do something related to schools or something.  I forget.

Nope, this whole thing was a conversation between Christie and Trump, except Trump wasn’t there, and Christie still lost.

I understand that Christie is being cagey about whether he’s running or not.  It makes sense to see if he can get some traction before declaring, and at any rate, there are (I guess) campaign finance laws that clutch in if you declare.  So I’m not criticizing his tactical flim-flam.  It’s the strategic and topical flim-flam that rankles.

Christie thinks that there is a great opportunity in 2022 and presumably in 2024.  He thinks that it is primarily about disaffected morons (to sum up) who finally might feel that the Democrats have gone a little too far.  Fine.  But good luck without the Trump voters.  Whether Trump runs or not (since we, uh, seem to be speaking about Trump all up in this Christie interview), the people closest to the flagpole are not there because of Trump — Trump is there because of us.  The “T” party is just the Tea Party, we haven’t changed, and we haven’t gone away.  Even Lois Lerner couldn’t vaporize us.

Peter Robinson seems to labor under a cold or a flu — he’s obviously pressing hard.  I hope he is well, and feels better soon.  I like Robinson, and this was obviously a pre-season dry run for Christie.  Fair enough, that’s how these things go.  I’m indebted to Robinson for conducting the interview — I found it informative.  Not all education is about pleasant things.  I’ll never forget Robinson going twelve rounds with Ann Coulter when she tried to tell everybody how severely conservative Romney was.  So I get that this interview is part of the machinery.  And as Republicans, even crunchy Trump-flavored Newt-filled orange-cons, we do want institutions that work, and which do things.  An establishment, if you will.  But that establishment should respect its most ideologically invested base, without which the establishment follows people like Christie into becoming increasingly pale pastels of Democrat colors.

We’re here to save ourselves, and to save you if we can.  Well, I’ve started to repeat myself, so I’ll just shove off.  After all — this has all happened before — 2011 from an old blog of mine:

I cannot describe how angry I am at the clown-car Republican candidate debates, Chris Christie, Mitt Romney, the punditry, the establishment–yep, pretty much the whole lot of ’em.

I have always been hostile to a third-party gambit; I still am. But the GOP seems hell-bent to have one. Ever since the Tea Party behaved magnificently and returned the GOP to power in an historic crushing mid-term defeat of the Communists currently defiling our Capitol, the GOP has been absolutely set on destroying the morale of the organization which restored the spirit of the Republican Party. Well, it’s not going to work.

If the RINOs insist on sabotaging the work of the Tea Party *to elect Republicans*, they will harm only themselves. The Tea Party has never supported and will never support a Democrat, and of course will not accept spineless tax & spend Republicans.

Christie is a plague.  Been that way for quite some time.