Christie’s soft criticism of Trump reflects balancing act

North Jersey Record (New Jersey)

By Charles Stile

July 7, 2015

Christie’s soft criticism of Trump reflects balancing act 

Chris Christie boasted to a southern New Hampshire audience in April that he often dines with his “good friend,” the casino mogul, reality show celebrity and now presidential candidate, Donald Trump.

“What you see on TV — that’s who he is. It’s not like he’s faking it. That’s the whole deal, man,” Christie said, regaling the crowd about Trump, calling him the “quintessential American.”

“He never, never is anything other than who he is.”

But now that Trump’s recent remarks denigrating Mexican immigrants as rapists and drug mules has revealed another side of “who he is” — and made him the target of widespread outrage and boycotts — Christie has refused to disown him.

“I think the comments he made were inappropriate and have no place in the race even though I like him,” Christie said when asked on the “CBS This Morning” show on Monday.

“He’s been a friend for 13 years. Sometimes even good friends say things you don’t agree with.”

Christie’s modest censure reflects a mix of strategic considerations, not the least of which is the difficulty Christie will face navigating the upcoming marathon of conservative primaries and caucuses.

Still, it was puzzling. Of all the Republican competitors for the 2016 nomination, Christie would seem best suited among the Republican candidates to level Trump with a forceful, tell-it-like-it-is rebuke.

After all, it was Christie who has been preaching the gospel of Big Tent inclusiveness and boasting of a 2013 reelection rout propelled by 51 percent of the Latino vote. He articulated the importance of “growing the party” and not repeating Mitt Romney’s 2012 campaign, which drew 27 percent of the Latino vote — a sharp drop from past GOP nominees.

“My party, quite frankly, has been guilty in some respects of speaking in a way that doesn’t sound very welcoming to new members,” Christie told a Latino business group last month.

Yet Christie’s modest scold placed him somewhere between Trump’s harsher critics, like former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who called the remarks “extraordinarily ugly,” and defenders like U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, who praised Trump for “focusing on the need to address illegal immigration.”

In a sense, that’s exactly that murky, difficult-to-categorize turf where Christie wants to be. It’s where he hopes to hew a long-shot path to the nomination.

For several years now, Christie has made the case that he is the most pragmatic, electable Republican for the 2016 contest against likely Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, a deal maker with charisma and communication skills and a proven ability to attract independents, disgruntled Democrats and minority voters.

But to win the nomination, Christie needs to survive the Republican process where evangelicals, Tea Party activists and anti-immigrant hard-liners hold enormous power. Christie needs to woo his share of them without destroying the more centrist, broad-based credentials he’ll need for a general election race.

It’s a tricky balancing act, which Christie test-drove last month during the furor over the Confederate battle flag in South Carolina. Christie rode out the racially charged controversy by calling for a more candid, national discussion about race relations, a move that reinforced his moderate résumé.

But he also avoided angering conservative defenders of the flag by waiting until Republican South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley gave him cover after she called for its removal.

In a similar way, Christie navigated a middle ground in the Trump flap by saying he liked the man, not his remarks.

“The problem with moderate candidates like Christie is that there are plenty in the base who agree with Trump,” said Louis DeSipio, an expert on Latino voter trends at the University of California-Irvine.

It’s not the first time that an anti-immigrant “friend” has placed Christie in this uncomfortable spot. Christie used the same friends-sometimes-say-dumb-things excuse about his friendship with Rep. Steve King, the Iowa Republican who stirred a furor in 2012 by saying teenage Mexican immigrants developed calves “the size of cantaloupes” for running drugs across the U.S. border.

In King’s case, Christie said loyalty trumped any qualms about King’s imprudent remarks.

And that loyalty took root in 2009, when Christie was grilled at a congressional hearing for his preference as United States attorney of New Jersey of picking political allies for lucrative contracts monitoring court settlements. King vigorously defended Christie at the hearing.

“I will be a supporter of Steve King for as long as he continues to be in public life,” Christie said at the time. “I consider him a friend.”

Christie’s has often displayed stubborn loyalty to those he considers “friends” and allies — even at the point of infuriating right-wing hard-liners.

In 2011, Christie fiercely defended his pick for a Superior Court judgeship — lawyer Sohail Mohammed, a Muslim — after right-wing bloggers argued that Mohammed would likely follow Shariah law based on the Quran instead of state or federal statutes. Christie, who forged a working relationship with Mohammed as United States attorney for New Jersey — called his critics “crazies” and “ignorant.”

Friendship and strategic imperatives may not be the only reasons why Christie has treaded lightly with Trump. Trump’s venomous and unpredictable tongue might have caused Christie to keep a check on his own fiery impulses.

Trump is not shy about publicly slamming those who criticize him — he’s mocked Bush as soft-hearted and muddle-headed on immigration and openly declared that “we don’t need another Bush in the White House,” a blunt attack that most candidates often leave to their surrogates.

And while Trump’s caustic comments have cost him his reality show on NBC and led Univision, the Spanish-speaking television network, to cancel coverage of his Miss USA pageant, Trump still has a conservative following. He has also surged in the polls, which means he could very well be on the stage at the first Republican Party debate next month in Cleveland, taking aim at anyone who scolded him.

Christie may simply be taking care not to make himself a prime Trump target.

Christie may put some more distance between himself and Trump later this month, when he’s expected to unveil his long-awaited proposals for immigration reform. But until then, Christie’s association with Trump has only undermined some of the governor’s muddled record on immigration, said Lynn Tramonte, associate director of America’s Voice, a pro-immigration rights group.

He’s supported tuition breaks for children of immigrants living here illegally, yet his administration backed a legal fight to block President Obama’s executive orders that froze deportations.

“People like Chris Christie are having a hard time trying to find a middle ground on this,” Tramonte said. “There is no middle ground on this.”

But for now, the middle ground suits Christie just fine.

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