The great Republican freak-out about Donald Trump has commenced. Friends are said to be planning an intervention. Staffers are “suicidal.” Reince Priebus is livid. Unnamed GOP bigwigs are once again fantasizing about replacing Trump on top of the ticket.
Let’s take a step back here. Trump hasn’t done himself any favors in recent days. He cannot seem to remember that he is running against Hillary Clinton, not Paul Ryan, John McCain, Kelly Ayotte, Khizr Khan and various local fire marshals.
The Khan flap in particular was an unforced error. The same Fox News poll showing Clinton up 10 points found nearly 70 percent of voters surveyed after Trump criticized the Gold Star father’s Democratic convention speech thought the candidate’s reaction was “out of bounds.”
But given all of Trump’s similar controversies in the past, even assuming heightened voter attention it is difficult to believe that Khan wiped out the Republican nominee’s mid-July polling lead all by himself.
More likely is that Clinton is the default leader in this race, in no small part because her party’s base is bigger than the Republicans’ in presidential years. Her personal unpopularity has so far kept the contest from getting out of Trump’s reach but it takes events like the Republican convention or Clinton email revelations to actually push him into the lead.
Clinton’s convention may have looked more chaotic on the ground in Philadelphia but on television, where it really mattered to most Americans, Democratic leaders projected unity.
Bernie Sanders’ delegates may have been louder on the floor and on city streets than “Never Trump” Republicans. But Sanders himself appeared in prime time to endorse Clinton for president, something Ted Cruz rather pointedly declined to do when given his own prominent convention speaking slot.
Clinton could count on speeches from the sitting Democratic president of the United States, the vice president and the last two surviving Democratic ex-presidents, one of whom is her husband, the Democratic congressional leadership and a wave of celebrities more famous than Scott Baio. Trump had his family, some minor entertainers and a few nervous Republicans reassuring the party’s rank and file that the businessman is not Clinton.
Thus Clinton has come out of her convention with a bigger bounce, likely padded by Trump’s missteps. It’s possible that, like her husband against George H.W. Bush, she entered her party’s convention looking mediocre but has now taken the lead until November.
At the same time, Clinton has almost become a bystander in the race she is now favored to win. It is now really an argument between people who find Trump unacceptable and Trump himself. The steady drumbeat from almost all sides that Trump is arrogant, ignorant and hates entire voting blocs that number in the millions is difficult to overcome with a few websites, columnists and radio hosts.
Even so, Trump still ties or leads Clinton in many polls about who voters trust on the economy, terrorism and destroying the Islamic State. Majorities agree with Trump that the country is on the wrong track. Some polls still have him within 5 points.
The rest of the Republican Party is not blameless in all this. You can get annoyed when Trump wants to pick fights with random people rather than discuss weak economic reports, shady side deals to the Iran nuclear agreement, Clinton’s ongoing disingenuousness about her private email server or the renewed U.S. bombing in Libya. Yet Trump’s lukewarm GOP supporters do much the same thing, except choosing to weigh in against their own candidate.
Many Republicans want to have it both ways on Trump. They want to distance the party’s brand from his more offensive or controversial statements but they also want him to beat Clinton. This sounds good in theory and I’ve long argued conservatives should have a more transactional relationship with Republican politicians.
Yet at some point, one has to decide whether Trump is fit for the presidency or not. Suggesting that he might be a racist but you’ll vote for him anyway because of judges or he might launch a nuclear war but has a better tax cut is no endorsement of Trump or your own judgment. If Clinton is the greater of two evils, it shouldn’t be hard to talk about it even if the nominee himself is having trouble staying on topic.
Instead many Republicans hope they can cajole Trump publicly through the media into letting Paul Manafort, Newt Gingrich or maybe his daughter Ivanka transform him into a well-oiled political machine. That’s not happening.
Even if Trump can become a more disciplined speaker, he is never going to be in full control of his message as long as he is relying on earned media rather than more conventional ads. The interviewers will still be able to ask him whatever they want while Clinton pounds him in ads and only selectively submits to questions.
Others in the GOP believe that they can reap whatever good Trump may do on the Supreme Court should he win or in protecting Senate seats in places like Ohio, Pennsylvania and New Hampshire should he lose more narrowly while still differentiating themselves from comments they fear could forever doom them with growing demographic groups.
This isn’t plausible. And at this point, it leaves Republicans who try it open to the charge that they could live with what Trump was saying about Gonzalo Curiel while failing to endorse Paul Ryan is a hanging offense.
The current Republican panic is less about Trump himself than the budding realization that all these beliefs were ill founded, kicking in right at the time they are noticing Clinton’s huge structural advantages.
None of this is to absolve Trump, who seems unable to handle any criticism and stubbornly clings to the belief there is almost no such thing as bad publicity. He does none literally nothing to reassure Republicans trying to talk themselves into vote for him or to convince undecided voters who dislike Clinton that he is qualified to be president, or even understands the gravity of the moment.
But he isn’t the only Republican who made his bed and now must lie in it.
