As the GOP contest unfolds, it is becoming increasingly clear that the party is divided into three parts. There is the insurgent, insurrectionist right, personified by Donald Trump. He is a demagogue. His pledge to rely on mass deportations as his response to undocumented immigration is hideous and inhumane. His anti-Muslim rhetoric in the days since the San Bernardino killings is irresponsible and extremist.
Still, it must be said that Trump's inflammatory style, his raised middle finger to traditional American values of decency and civility, has captured the imagination of many of the voters who constitute the GOP base. His support is not likely to fade, at least not by that much. Voters have been paying attention to this race out of all proportion to previous contests and the base likes what it sees. The fall and winter of 2015 are not politics as usual and the old metrics no longer seem to apply.
The second of the GOP's three parts consists of the Christian right. Their champion has been Ben Carson, but Carson's candidacy now looks like it is returning to earth. His life story had a too-good-to-be-true inspirational feel to it, and now it seems like parts of it were. And then there have been Carson's awkward stumbles, especially in the field of foreign policy. Most of Carson's rivals must still envy his polling numbers, which are pretty consistently in the mid-teens, but he no longer appears to be a plausible candidate for the nomination.
Poised to make a move on Carson is Ted Cruz. Cruz reminds one of those auto racers who know that they are in an endurance competition and pace themselves accordingly. They allow other drivers to take turns in the lead, knowing that in the end they have the equipment and the team to make a move.
That is Cruz. He has the credentials to appeal to the religious right. His father is a Christian dominionist minister who believes that the United States should be governed according to biblical principles and only by godly leaders certain in their Christian convictions.
On the campaign trail, Cruz is not bashful about emphasizing his own religious-right connections. His anti-Muslim rhetoric is not as extreme as Trump's but it has certainly grown more intense since the San Bernardino massacre. He has declared that we are "at war" with radical Islam and has called for a halt to refugee resettlement programs from Syria and other Muslim-majority nations. His harshness is guaranteed to make matters worse and to intensify America's bitter divisions.
The times call for a temperate leader, not a rage-filled one. Yet it must be conceded that there is a large audience for the rhetoric that Cruz is selling, and he is in the process of consolidating and even expanding his support. Look at the polls from Iowa and you find that he is running second or even first.
This leaves the GOP's third part, the establishment. The establishment had long been in denial over the strength of the insurgent and Christian right wings of the party. More recently, there have been signs that the establishment now takes matters more seriously. The implosion of Jeb Bush's candidacy has probably helped to concentrate their minds. Indeed, this new sense of urgency may explain the sudden desire on the part of many members of the establishment to anoint Marco Rubio as their chosen one.
Rubio, it is thought, has youth on his side. He is articulate and knows how to debate. Still, he remains less than the sum of his parts. His polling numbers are not bad, but he has yet to gain any separation on Cruz or Carson. In CNN's most recent poll, Rubio is running fourth. And in Ipsos-Reuters' most recent poll, he is fifth, behind Trump, Carson, Cruz, and Jeb Bush (I am consulting figures from Huff Post pollster).
On closer inspection, Rubio comes across as hollow. One need only consult his shape-shifting positions on undocumented immigrants. In 2013, he helped to craft reform legislation to regularize the status of undocumented immigrants. He has more recently been trying to steer away from that position in gestures meant to appeal to the nativist right wing. His temporizing is unlikely to succeed and only makes him appear to be a creature of expedience. Still, he has attracted substantial financial contributions, especially to his super-pac. Will the money help? Probably not.
The establishment must nevertheless coalesce around someone. And that someone might prove to be New Jersey Governor Chris Christie. For sure, his recent polling is atrocious. But it is not unheard of for a well-known candidate sitting near the bottom of the polls to break through. John Kerry did so in 2004, using the sudden implosion of Howard Dean's candidacy as slingshot for his own.
What Christie has in his favor is his campaign style, which is brash, arrogant and hard-edged. The mood of the electorate, especially of many of the voters who turn out for Republican nominating contests, can fairly be described as angry, if not filled with rage. The focus of their anger was once undocumented immigrants from Latin America. More recently, it has metastasized into a spirit of vengeance directed against the Muslim world. That this is so is an unspeakable tragedy. Still, it is the lamentable state of contemporary politics. Donald Trump has captured and channeled that fury, but can he tame it?
Let's be clear: Chris Christie is no Donald Trump. He knows better than to threaten water-boarding or to promise collective punishment. He is opposed to ethnic and religious profiling. Still, there is a swagger to the man, a confrontational style, a pugnacity that is likely to play well among those Republican primary voters and caucus goers who are in the mood for a fight.
To succeed, however, he will need greater visibility. How will he come by that in a crowded and noisy GOP field? He has taken an important step by winning the endorsement of the Manchester Union Leader, New Hampshire's major newspaper and perennially an important player in that state's primary. A "New Hampshire" strategy, whereby a candidate focuses disproportionate resources on winning that state's primary as a springboard to future success has always been high-risk. For Christie, however, it might be the key to a comeback.
Christie has vulnerabilities. His style can easily and seamlessly verge into bullying. Could I vote for Christie? No, I could not. He does not have the temperament to lead in a complex time, his overbearing style would ride roughshod over civil liberties, and his support for Republican economic policies generally is troubling. The politics of rage is tearing apart the fabric of our nation and I can only support a candidate who finally summons up "the better angels of our nature." All that said, if I set aside my own views and try to match the candidate with the Zeitgeist, Christie looks like a real possibility.