Why Did Gov. Christie Hurt His People On Purpose

What do people like about Chris Christie?

Americans generally like fat people, who they find to be jolly and unthreatening, even if they're assholes.I'm serious, but to be a little more substantive, what is "likable" about Chris Christie, other than his "Jersey tough" self-confidence (to people who still prize such things), is, not his "balls," but in fact something more like the opposite - the intense desire to preserve his political viability that leads him to refuse to follow the even more extreme members of the conservative wing of his party (the only one left, really), most of them accountable only to similarly conservative district- or state-level constituencies, over the national political cliff that threatens to end their status as a major political party (and would quickly threaten his near-term future in a blue state in which he barely won office in an off-year). The recognition that Katrina-like conditions could torpedo his political career after Sandy, for example, led him to tie himself closely to the President of the opposite party (not insignificantly against a rival who might displace his own ambitions) and call out members of his own in an attempt to secure funds for his State, of which he admittedly is quite a partisan. Never mind that he had previously ignored warnings about the impact of such storms - the academics he still loves to deride are apparently among the "fools and time-wasters" referenced by Kelly Erickson - and taken retrograde actions on climate change, which he continues to doubt, and other environmental matters.It doesn't hurt his popularity that he's a savvily self-promoting social media user, and, though very much a suburban social conservative with a history of questionable statements and policies directed at women and minorities, at least someone cognizant of the inhumanity of intolerance, less bad than the sort of trogolodytic homophobes and racists you find among Southern and Midwestern Republicans in Congress.

Why wasn't Chris Christie more successful in the 2016 GOP Presidential primary? What did he do wrong, if anything? What hurt him?

He was hardly anyone's first choice. He's not liked much in NJ, since he's governed far to the right of how he campaigned, to keep himself viable in this very right-wing Republican primary. (And that's sidestepping the point that he hasn't governed NJ much at all; he's spent most of the past few years campaigning for other Republican governors -- very successfully, I have to add -- for the 2014 cycle, and then spending time in Iowa and New Hampshire for the primaries himself.)If you want a "truth-telling" Northeastern loudmouth with a squishy history of being a "true conservative," Trump does that much better. Christie is good at being loud and mean and overbearing, but Trump is even better, and much more plugged into the current Republican zeitgeist -- and unburdened by ever having held any political office, and having to defend an actual record.If you want a Republican governor who accomplished right-wing goals in a very blue state, Christie's accomplishments are rather meager and pretty far in the past. Scott Walker, who dropped out of the race two months ago, was better at that, too. John Kasich, who's still in the race, does the "conservative who can make compromises" thing much better as well, and is from a more electorally important state. Even Jeb Bush, though his accomplishments are even further past, has a better record as a governor.And, as others have noted, the fact that he wasn't directly hostile to the sitting President during a disaster in his state has counted strongly against him with the hard-core Republican audience. (I personally think that shows the hard-core Republican audience is deeply out of touch with reality, but that's irrelevant to the point at hand.)So the real question is: out of this big, crowded field, why pick Christie? There was no compelling reason.