Christie has hung his hopes on a successful breakthrough in the Granite State. After flaming out spectacularly in the state’s primary during his 2016 run, Christie has been laser-focused on charming the state’s Republicans and formally launched his current campaign in New Hampshire.
But the new ad buy is one of the biggest expenses of Christie’s campaign thus far, and unfortunately, it looks unlikely to pay the dividends he’ll need if he wants to climb up in the race. Christie has an average of just 3.3 percent support in national polls, far behind Trump’s average of 62.5 percent. In New Hampshire, Christie is faring comparatively better, but that’s not saying much: RealClearPolitics has him third in the race with 10.5 in the state’s rolling average. That puts him more than 14 points behind Nikki Haley and a daunting 36 points behind Trump.
Christie has spent his entire campaign hammering the same message that his new ad buy is themed around: painting Trump, as well as a few other Republican candidates, as too extreme. But it’s not clear that casting himself as a more moderate option holds much appeal for Republican voters. The rather terrifying reality is that it looks as if many Trump voters actually want a candidate willing to break the laws. It could be that the money Christie plans to spend highlighting the fact that Trump wants to “burn America to the ground” will end up being an in-kind donation to the former president.