This column first appeared in Kyle Whitmire’s newsletter, Alabamafication. Subscribe here.

Never mind what happened in New Hampshire last night. The only candidate fit to be president dropped out two weeks ago. When Chris Christie suspended his Quixotic campaign, truth lost the GOP primary.

The New Hampshire battlefield had been ceded to the most ethically necrotic character of our time, Donald Trump, and nominally to Nikki Haley, a moral weakling afraid to live outside her opponent’s shadow.

Yes, I remember Bridgegate, and I know Christie was for him before he was against him.

And yes, I know, Joe Biden will still face Trump in November, if he lives that long. But to borrow Biden’s favorite refrain, come on, man. He’s 81 years old. Is he the best the Democrats could do?

America needs a truth-teller and someone young enough to tell it.

For Republicans, that was Christie. Sadly, most didn’t want to listen.

In Tuscaloosa last month, at what was supposed to be a Republican primary debate, only one candidate was willing to stand before that audience and tell the truth — that Donald Trump is a danger to this country and unfit to be president.

Two debates prior, Christie had been the only candidate — when moderators asked whether they would support Trump for president were he convicted of a felony — not to raise his hand.

Let’s take a second to chew on that. Three years since the most embarrassing day in our living history, most GOP candidates — ostensibly running against Trump — said they would support him for president even if he were convicted of such crimes as attempted election-rigging, inciting a rebellion and theft of highly classified information.

And those supposed challengers weren’t alone. Four years ago, I wrote that Donald Trump was a test for this nation. That test is not over and legions of Republican officials are still flunking it.

The same day of that debate in Tuscaloosa, Alabama’s junior senator, Katie Britt, joined her Alabama Republican congressional colleagues, endorsing a man a New York civil jury already found to have raped a woman.

She failed, too.

We could name this neurosis for any number of Republican politicos — Lindsey Graham and Tim Scott come to mind — but because she’s ours, I’ll call it Katie Britt Syndrome.

No one should put faith in such people for a reason so simple it’s easy to miss — faith should be a reciprocal thing and they have no faith in those they hope to represent.

And this is the tragedy of the truth-tellers such as Christie.

I have a soft spot for those who’ll stand in front of a crowded room and tell everybody there that they’ve lost their minds. Such a thing takes courage, but that’s not the essential quality here.

It’s faith.

Christie had faith that the American people could handle the truth.

The folks suffering from Katie Britt Syndrome have no such faith. They are smart enough to know better. Sometimes they get caught, by hot mics or careless text messages, speaking their unspeakable — what they believe to be the truth. But for the sake of their careers, they won’t say such things openly.

Christie had faith in Republican voters that, if given viable alternatives, they would make better choices. Christie had faith that, if told the truth, they could listen to it, internalize it and act on it accordingly.

Sadly, for now, such faith seems to have been misplaced.

Christie’s name will go down on the honor roll of men and women who found their backbones and put America’s interests ahead of their own — Kinzinger, Romney, Kasich and Cheney.

It might seem like their careers are at an end.

But character is destiny.

And this story isn’t over.