Let's be upfront about this movement to draft Chris Christie for president, which every reputable news organization is reporting will not come to fruition later today.
It didn't come from the Republican electorate, en masse. A recent poll showed that a lot of Republicans didn't even want him to run this year, much less be their favorite candidate.
No, it came from conservative thinkers like William Kristol, Joe Scarborough, Peggy Noonan, and others unsatisfied with the caliber of the candidates already in the race.
It certainly didn't come from the Tea Party brigade, who did yearn for Sarah Palin and then shifted to Michelle Bachmann, Rick Perry and now Herman Cain.
This is what Kristol wrote last week, when the fantasy of the New Jersey Governor entering the race was at a fever height:
It’s one thing for someone who has never run for office—a Colin Powell or a Bill Bennett or a David Petraeus—to decide he’s just not cut out for elective office, and to choose not to embark on that course. But Chris Christie—like Paul Ryan and Mitch Daniels, to mention only two others—already holds elective office. If any of them honestly thinks he could win the nomination and the presidency, and would be a better candidate and a better president than the rest of the Republican field—and if there are no show-stopping medical or family issues—doesn’t that public official have some obligation to step up to the plate?
You don’t have to “feel deeply in [your] heart” that you’re called to run for president. You have to think you’re the right man for the job. And, if that’s the case, you have a duty to your country to step forward.
It’s not about you. It’s about your country.
