What’s on the Line in Las Vegas

As we get older, some of us ac­cu­mu­late pet peeves. For me, this is one: when journ­al­ists write of an up­com­ing event as tan­tamount to a turn­ing point in the his­tory of civil­iz­a­tion, or at least since the in­ven­tion of sliced bread. In polit­ics, many im­port­ant events shape elec­tions, and a suc­ces­sion of events big and small make up what we call the cam­paign. For some of the can­did­ates, Tues­day night’s Re­pub­lic­an de­bate in Las Ve­gas, sponsored by CNN and Face­book, is crit­ic­ally im­port­ant; for oth­ers, even a strong per­form­ance would likely be too little, too late. There are likely to be no ad­di­tion­al events between now and the first week of Janu­ary—noth­ing that’s planned, any­way—that can change the dy­nam­ics of this race. For Chris Christie, the tough-talk­ing gov­ernor of New Jer­sey and a former U.S. at­tor­ney, the ter­ror­ist at­tacks in Par­is seem to have provided a spark. His com­mand­ing per­form­ances at New Hamp­shire town meet­ings and the re­cent en­dorse­ment of his can­did­acy by the in­flu­en­tial New Hamp­shire Uni­on Lead­er have pushed Christie in­to con­ten­tion with Marco Ru­bio for the