The East Coast Media's Great GOP Hope

After my challenging of @GovChristie on @ThisWeekABC for his steadfast support of Donald Trump, @amandacarpenter dropped this fastball on @BulwarkOnline: "Chris Christie’s Bogus Blunt Talk" https://t.co/sTHJqyCpyy She threw that one right down the middle for a strike!

— rolandsmartin (@rolandsmartin) September 13, 2021

So Christie went to the Reagan library to denounce....He Who Must Not Be Named.

Seriously.  He wouldn't mention Trump's name.

HINT, HINT. What you, dear reader, are supposed to infer is that Christie is criticizing Trump. But without saying the word “Trump.” Because not saying Trump’s name makes it an even bolder and blunter foray into the marketplace of ideas. Or something.

Yeah, this article is not a transcript of the speech, but still:  you get the idea.  Funnier is how Christie tried to frame himself as the Heir To Reagan:

But whatever. Historical accuracy isn’t the point. The point is that Chris Christie wants you to think that Trump is Goldwater, the MAGA people are the Birchers, and that he, Chris Christie, is Reagan.

I know that's out of order, but you have to start there to work backwards and then read between the lines at what even this Bulwark writer won't say.  Let me go back to the paragraph just before the "HINT, HINT."

But let’s take Christie at his word for a moment. Just for giggles. The former governor took the audience back to 1962 when “the American political landscape was not unlike today’s” and talked about how terrible it was that Barry Goldwater pandered to the Birchers and how the party paid dearly for this mistake in 1964. Christie described the Birchers as “downright paranoid, at least as radical as the truth deniers and conspiracy propagandists of today.” 

“Not unlike today” has to include something else the times have in common: the persistence of racism. But let’s turn first to the situation of Goldwater.

Ah, yes; Goldwater was captured by the Birchers back in’62. Except the entire GOP nominated Goldwater.  This was back in the day when conventions were real events, and men were men and women were women, and other argle-bargle.  The GOP selected Goldwater, thrust him up against the "liberal" from Texas, and the race between the Westerners was off!  Goldwater didn't trudge his way across 50 states, garnering votes as he went.  He was selected by the party apparatus; which is to say things haven't really changed that much in the GOP in almost 60 years, isn't it? No mention here that LBJ "schlonged" Goldwater for LBJ's re-election (well, he'd been elected VP already).  I mention that because now we can go to the paragraph just after "HINT, HINT" (Everything revolves around that, doesn't it?  HINT, HINT, that's a clue!)

Anyway, in Christie’s telling, it wasn’t until Ronald Reagan’s “rejection of Birch extremism,” as this rather obvious ripped from the old-headlines political allegory goes, that the party started winning again. This flies in the face of history, obviously: The Republicans won with Nixon—bigly. And Richard Nixon, for all his faults, absolutely schlonged the Democrats in his re-election win.

Well, both analyses fly in the face of history because we’re also asked to overlook Nixon's racist "Southern Strategy," as well as Reagan's outrageously racist "welfare queen" stories, and his racebaiting by announcing his candidacy in Philadelphia, Mississippi, where he spoke ringingly and approvingly of states' rights.  You don't need a decoder ring for either of those messages. And they link Reagan to Goldwater and Nixon, as well as Trump. The more things change, as the French say.

I bring this up because the author doesn't; and because Trump and Trumpism are all about racism and white supremacy.  Something the Birchers were quite comfortable with, too, and another reason they backed Goldwater and feared LBJ.  So Trump can be Goldwater (electorally he certainly is, though Goldwater was a much more honorable public figure than Trump; crazy as a bedbug in 1962, but still far and away above Trump even then), the MAGA people (i.e., the GOP primary voters) can be the Birchers (in fact I welcome the comparison), and Christie can be Reagan, if he thinks that works.  Certainly the East Coast press did at one time.  Still, the question raised in the article and never returned to, is the only question that matters:

But the overriding question is: Why should anyone listen to Chris Christie?

Why, indeed?