Dan Amira and Jennifer Rubin expect Christie's endorsement of Romney to help Romney's image. Ramesh Ponnuru explains how the establishment manages to keep winning nominations – even as the Republican base swings rightward:
[T]he Republican establishment almost always wins presidential-nomination contests, and conservative insurgents almost never do. Since 1984, nobody substantially to the right of the party establishment has won the nomination. Make a mental list of the last four Republican nominees – George H.W. Bush, Bob Dole, George W. Bush and John McCain – and the notion of a Romney victory in the primaries becomes less surprising. Establishment-oriented candidates keep winning for two reasons. The first is that the party establishment has moved to the right, too, co-opting conservatives who might otherwise have overthrown it. … The second reason the establishment wins is that its opponents never unify behind another candidate.
The Dish 