“If you were a Republican strategist and you were king, you might tap him and say, ‘Look at this guy’s universal appeal, he can win for us, let’s have him,'” Hume said. “But in party primaries in the Republican party especially, the argument of electability has never been that powerful. People are looking in the primary season for somebody who thinks the way they do, and who agrees with them on key issues. In some respects Chris Christie is indeed a moderate. So he has that to be concerned about.”
“You look at somebody like Rick Perry raising, in a subtle way, doubts about him,” Hume said, referring to Perry’s glancing shot at Christie’s conservative bona
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“You’ve a group inside the Republican Party, the tea party element, which the Republican Party badly, badly needs to keep in its coalition and to tap its energy for election day and the whole season,” Hume continued. “They need a candidate who can unite these wings of the party. And the tea party people are not persuaded by electability arguments, and they don’t like anybody who they think may turn out to be a moderate. They’re absolutely convinced—against much historical evidence, I might add—that you can’t win a moderate. That every time you nominate a moderate, a McCain or a Romney or whatever, you lose. That’s the problem, that’s the hill Christie has to climb.”
Watch the full clip below, via Fox News:
[Image via screengrab]
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