Fat Lady Skank – Gangster Fun
Christie was never going to get nominated, of course. Not because he’s overweight (one of the more ridiculous memes of the recent cycle), but just because he had no obvious base. It seems like every week there’s another Republican guy just about ready to emerge from their clown car, but for most part they all resist the urge. Christie is just one among many in that respect. And it’s to his credit, I suppose, that he was able to recognize that the general acclaim of Republican elites was not going to translate itself into any real level of support.
But the real issue here is that Christie has permanently ruined all future Sherman Statements.
Sherman Statements, of course, are definitive and absolute declarations that a potential candidate is not going to run. The classic example of such a statement being Sherman’s: “I will not accept if nominated and will not serve if elected.”
Such things have always been a bit overrated. There is a time-tested cat and mouse game where a candidate conceals the fact that they are running in order to save face or in order to cultivate further demand. But it’s usually been the case that such people at least make the small effort to leave a bit of doubt in their responses. You get things like “I have no intention of running” or “I am focused exclusively on my current job” or “the job is not even on my radar.”
With Christe, however, he has used virtually every variant on “I will absolutely not run” under the sun. All the while, it has been obvious that he was in fact interested. And, for the past few weeks, he DID in fact start to run. All of which created the absurdity of a news conference where he told people that he had decided not to run for president, which was simply a LESS emphatic denial than he had been offering for over a year.