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To make the stage for Wednesday's Republican debate at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, candidates need to hit 6% in three national polls or two national polls and polls in two of the early states, as well as getting donations from 80,000 people. So far only four people have qualified: Donald Trump (who is not going to show up), Nikki Haley, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), and Vivek Ramaswamy. One person who would very much like to be there is Chris Christie. However, unless lightning strikes today (the deadline for qualifying polls), Christie won't make the cut. So far, Christie has hit 6% in New Hampshire, but not nationally and not in any of the other early states. Nationally, he is about 2%, not 6%. His #2 early state is Iowa, where he is at 4%. He is well over the 80,000-donor mark, but the polling looks bleak for him.
If he doesn't make the stage, he has a hard choice ahead of him. In August, he said that candidates who don't get on stage for all the debates should drop out. Reporters are already asking him if that applies to himself, as well as everyone else. He has consistently said: "I'm not considering dropping out."
This is where the rubber meets the road. Christie is an experienced politician. He knew from Day 1 that his chances of getting the GOP nomination were somewhere between zero and nil. He just wanted to prevent Donald Trump from getting the nomination. Now he has a choice: Stay in, come in third in New Hampshire, and then vanish without a trace, or drop out, endorse Nikki Haley and campaign hard for her. If he really wants to stop Trump, the only way to do it is for him to back the one candidate, Haley, who appears to have some faint chance of beating Trump in the event that the courts take him down. If she could consolidate the "not Trump" vote and keep going until after his D.C. trial is over, she might have a slim chance. The "keeps going" part depends on having campaign money, but the Kochtopus could handle that part of it. Christie surely knows this, but politicians have large egos. We'll probably find out in a week or so. If he stays in, we may get the political equivalent to the question "If a tree falls in the forest, does it make a sound if there is no one around to hear it?"
Another bit of bad news is that Christie's name may not appear on the Maine primary ballot. To make it, a candidate needed 2,000 valid signatures by last Friday. Christie submitted 6,000 signatures, but the state's director of elections said that only 844 were certified by local registrars, as required. Christie is appealing.
For the people on stage, the one with the most to win or lose is Haley. If she can just ignore Vivek "Scum" Ramaswamy and put DeSantis in his place, she could break out and become the clear alternative to Trump. That, along with, say, $100 million in ads thanks to the Kochtopus, and she could be positioned to come in second in the early states. From there, she could be positioned to get the GOP nomination if something took out Trump. If she hits on DeSantis all evening and not on Trump, she might even impress Trump that she is a fighter, and might have a small chance of getting him to pick her as his running mate. She's not ideal, for many reasons, but if he wants a woman running mate, all of the other contenders have their own issues. None are perfect. (V)