Replies

It's pretty bad when someone manages to make Chris Christie look brilliant by comparison.

I saw them both up close at the Georgia State Convention in 2015. Rubio just gave a stump speech of his biography and was done. We all heard it before. Christie actually tried to tailor his speech for his audience (Georgia isn't New Jersey), and did a very good job of it. He was actually engaging. Cruz had a separate reception in the evening, and though I was a Cruz supporter, was underwhelmed. I wouldn't say he mailed it in, but he was more or less on auto-pilot. Fiorina used a campaign tape. Not a winning move. John Ellis Bush had proxies manning lonely tables. Even in 2015, they looked like a well-funded, losing team. Even though his state was next door. They were the best dressed. No Rand Paul or Scott Walker presence.

I'm not a fan of Chris Christie in terms of policy either (though in a deep blue state like NJ, he's as good as you're going to get), but you're right in that he was a very effective political operator and speaker, and intellectually light years ahead of a scripted empty suit like Rubio. Jeb Bush and Carly Fiorina weren't any better.

What I remember about the 2016 election was being highly skeptical of Trump at first, thinking that he wasn't serious about any of his immigration or trade policies and was just running a vanity campaign, but most of the alternatives were so bad that I said "what the hell" and voted for him. The gamble paid off, at least given the alternatives in the primary and even more so the general election.