Will Chris Christie's Phony Pro-Choice Protestations Help Him In New Hampshire... Or Anywhere Else?

Chris Christie's desperate bid to get back into the second tier of Republican candidates-- the latest Fox News poll shows him as the first choice, nationally, of 3% of GOP voters, pretty much the same as what every other poll in the last month has shown-- is 100% dependent on a New Hampshire strategy. If he doesn't come in first or second in New Hampshire, his campaign is over. And an average of polls of New Hampshire GOP voters does show him doing better there than in the rest of the country-- 5.7%, trailing Trump, Bush, Walker and Kasich but ahead of Rand Paul, Carson, Rubio, Cruz, Huckabee and everyone consigned to the Fox kiddie table tonight.

Christie's record among hard-core Republican voters as an inadequate defender of the anti-Choice orthodoxy-- see video above-- probably won't hurt him as much in New Hampshire, a solidly pro-Choice state, as it will in Iowa, where he's only going through the motions and knows he has almost no shot, not with Trump trumping the Christie bully boy routine that he originally had hoped would endear him to women-hating right-wing fanatics. But the evangelicals who dominate the Iowa Republican caucuses are not buying into Christie's Ralph Kramden routine-- not with the Trump clown in the race. Even some at the Fox kiddie table are beating him in Iowa! His average 2.3% in Iowa is less than what Iowa likely caucus-goers give Bobby Jindal (2.5%), Carly Fiorina (2.5%) and Rick Santorum (2.8%).

But in New Hampshire, 71% of voters say abortion should be legal all or most of the time and only 27% say it should be illegal. So maybe Christie can move up there. Maybe he can even come in in the top 2 or 3. But where does he go from there? South Carolina Republican voters are going to kill him. Nevada? Probably nothing helpful there either-- other than the Winecup-Gamble Ranch Inc., which has given Christie around a million dollars so far. I'd say Christie isn't going anywhere and crooked hedge fund billionaire Steve Cohen is wasting his millions on trying to prop him up-- two million between Cohen and his wife Alexandra-- as is the criminally minded Home Depot founder Ken Langone, Christie's other billionaire backer (although he's only given the New Jersey governor's presidential campaign $100,000 so far).

So what's Christie's next act? It probably won't be in New Jersey, where he is thoroughly loathed. And I don't see a President Clinton or a President Sanders appointing him to anything. Maybe that's why he's being so nice (relatively) to Jeb, Trump and Walker lately.