[oldembed width="420" height="245" src="https://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32545640" flashvars="launch=48808828&width=420&height=245" fid="2"]

Governor Chris Christie is scheduled to deliver one of the most anticipated prime-time speeches at the GOP Convention tomorrow night. But apparently, he believes it's all for naught.

Gov. Chris Christie wasn’t willing to give up the New Jersey statehouse to be Mitt Romney’s running mate because he doubted they’d win, The Post has learned. Romney’s top aides had demanded Christie step down as the state’s chief executive because if he didn’t, strict pay-to-play laws would have restricted the nation’s largest banks from donating to the campaign — since those banks do business with New Jersey. But Christie adamantly refused to sacrifice his post, believing that being Romney’s running mate wasn’t worth the gamble. “[Christie] felt, at one point, that [President] Obama could lose this. And, look, there still is that chance. But he knows, right now, you have to say it’s unlikely,” one source said.

Whoops.

Christie, who is a darling of establishment conservatives, flirted with a run himself, but must have made the calculation that Obama was going to be too difficult to beat, and decided to sit 2012 out. If that was his thinking about his own run, then he certainly wouldn't want to go down in flames as Romney's number two, especially since Team Willard wanted him to give up his post.

In any event, this is not the story Mitt Romney wanted plastered all over the media going into the convention.