Christie will get stuck and not make it out of the starting gate.
Via CSM
In the summer of 1999, John McCain didn’t have many big names backing his campaign for president. He didn’t have much money, either, and even resorted at one point to giving away ice cream to drum up a decent-size crowd.
Enter the town hall.
Driven to “desperation,” McCain decided to meet as many people as possible at as many of the Q&A events as he could. It took months for the strategy to pay dividends, but when it did, McCain was packing ’em in.
Recommended: How much do you know about Jeb Bush? Take our quiz.“It was just jammed,” McCain said of one town hall, held at a fire house at 8 a.m. “That people would get up real early in the morning to go to a town hall with me — that was the first real indication that we had some momentum.”
That momentum turned into a victory of 19 percentage points over George W. Bush in the New Hampshire primary. He lost the 2000 nomination to Bush but later rode the same strategy to a victory in the state’s 2008 primary — his first on the way to becoming the GOP nominee that year.[…]
“For better or worse, the curse of McCain is he set the standards for how you win in New Hampshire,” said Steve Duprey, a top McCain adviser and Republican National Committee member from New Hampshire.
None of the 17 candidates in the GOP field may be following the McCain playbook as closely as New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who flew to New Hampshire the day he announced his candidacy. He’s held seven town halls since his announcement and 15 so far this year as well as other public events.