New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie called out GOP officials for being “hypocritical” in attempting to deny the party’s presidential nomination to front-runner Donald Trump after forcing candidates to sign a loyalty pledge to support the eventual nominee.
“I find that ironic and somewhat hypocritical,” said Mr. Christie, who dropped out of the presidential race and now supports Mr. Trump. “The fact is, we are public officials. We serve the public, and they get to elect who they want to nominate.”
He recalled having to sign the GOP’s loyalty pledge as a condition of participating in the party’s debates, when the party leaders feared Mr. Trump would run as a third-party candidate and potentially become a spoiler in the general election.
But now that Mr. Trump is eyeing the nomination, the party establishment is looking for a way to manipulate the will of the people, the governor said.
“I think it would disenfranchise a lot of people, and it would also really, really disillusion the people who are voting in this country,” Mr. Christie said at a press conference in Linden, New Jersey.
Republican Party leaders have been scrambling to block Mr. Trump’s march to the nomination, hoping to deny him the 1,237 delegates needed to win, and force a brokered convention in July in Cleveland.
The Republican National Committee’s Standing Rules Committee last week told its members that convention delegates are not bound by the will of their states’ primary voters.
Curly Haugland, the Republican National Committeeman for North Dakota, instructed delegates in a March 11 letter that delegators can cast votes for the nominee at the convention “according to their personal choice” and dismissed primaries as “nearly worthless ’beauty contests.’ “
The letter was first reported by the Daily Caller.
• S.A. Miller can be reached at smiller@washingtontimes.com.
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