Veteran GOP strategist Ron Christie has some free advice for leading Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump as the billionaire developer prepares for Thursday's debate: Attack your opponents, but don't out duel them.
"Donald Trump has got to follow that old adage of do no harm, and for him to do no harm, he has to be himself. The minute that he starts trying to out duel Jeb Bush or out-intellectualize Bobby Jindal, he's in trouble," Christie said Tuesday on "The Steve Malzberg Show" on
Newsmax TV.
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"But if Donald Trump can be Donald Trump and go after his opponents. You know he's going to go after Jeb Bush, and to try to really get a [reaction] from the crowd … He's playing to the audience. That's how he wins.
"Now the other candidates on the other hand, they don't want to get trumped by Trump. They would rather either not get insulted by him or not have to deal with him. I'm very interested to see what the other folks are going to do, how they handle his presence on the stage."
Christie, who was a member of Vice President Dick Cheney's staff and is now CEO of Christie Strategies and a Daily Beast columnist, said Trump's skyrocketing poll numbers are the result of the dysfunction in Washington, D.C.
"What Donald Trump represents is the fact there's a large amount of the American electorate that is dissatisfied with what is going on in Washington. They've heard the same old promises made, promises not kept," Christie said.
"Politicians on the Republican side said we're going to fight Obama, we're going to lower taxes, we're going to do all these things. Nothing happens.
"Trump is filling a voice of people who are saying, you know what, I've had enough, I've had it with those guys, I've had it with the establishment, I'm going to give somebody else a try."
Christie believes Trump will ultimately fail in his bid to secure the 2016 GOP nomination, but not before making his frustrated opponents blow a lot of campaign money to take him on.
.
"His celebrity factor gives him an opening that will ultimately fizzle, but it's going to make a lot of those people have to spend a lot of money … that they would have otherwise spent maybe attacking each other or putting ads up," he told Steve Malzberg.
Christie is the author of
"Acting White: The Curious History of a Racial Slur," published by Thomas Dunne.