Donald Trump’s sinking polls, unending attacks and public blunders have the GOP reconsidering its strategy for November
When Donald Trump mucks things up, the first person to let him know is usually Republican Party boss Reince Priebus. Almost every day, Trump picks up his cell phone to find Priebus on the line, urging him to quash some feud or clarify an incendiary remark.
The Wisconsin lawyer has been a dutiful sherpa to the Manhattan developer, guiding him through the dizzying altitude of the presidential race and lobbying the GOP to unite behind a figure who threatens its future.
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Since his convention in Cleveland, Trump has done almost nothing right by traditional standards. He has picked fights with senior Republicans and Gold Star parents, invited Russian spies to meddle in U.S. democracy, appeared to joke about gun enthusiasts’ prematurely removing a U.S. President from office. He’s shuffled campaign messages like playing cards and left GOP elders fretting that he lacks the judgment to be Commander in Chief. During a dismal two-week stretch, he surrendered a narrow lead over Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and now trails by an average of 8 points in recent nationwide polls.
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Then there are the challenges entirely of Trump’s own making. More than three months after he effectively clinched the Republican nomination, he has yet to settle on a strategy to match the demands of a broader electorate. In an interview with TIME on Aug. 9, the improvisational candidate sounded torn between conflicting pieces of advice, unsure of how much to hold back and when to let loose. “I am now listening to people that are telling me to be easier, nicer, be softer. And you know, that’s O.K., and I’m doing that,” he says. “Personally, I don’t know if that’s what the country wants.”
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Trump goes with his gut, and when his instincts betray him, no one can rein him in. “No one puts words in his mouth, and nobody decides what he says other than him,” says longtime adviser Roger Stone. “Politics is nine-tenths discipline.”
For party officials, the Trump campaign has become like the sign inside factories: X days without an accident, with the tally regularly resetting to zero. “I think what he wants to do and what he does do are two different things,” says another senior GOP official.
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For Republicans loyal to the party but scornful of their nominee, the Trump campaign was increasingly becoming a moral conundrum. As if to goad them, Trump even began to call the integrity of the American democratic process into question. “I’m afraid the election is going to be rigged,” he said in Ohio. “I have to be honest.”
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Republicans began to openly wonder whether Trump could be trusted with the nation’s nuclear arsenal. Sensing an opportunity to pounce, Barack Obama declared Trump “woefully unprepared” for the presidency during an East Room press conference. Hank Paulson, a former Bush Treasury Secretary, said Trump had led “a populist hijacking of one of the United States’ great political parties.” Fifty Republicans with deep experience in national security signed a letter opposing him. A steady stream of Republican operatives and members of Congress, including Senator Susan Collins of Maine, announced that they could not vote for Trump either.
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With their candidate mired in self-sabotage, Republicans could only watch and wince. “I don’t think we’ve seen anything like this since George Wallace,” said retail mogul Art Pope. Sitting at a lakeside hotel in the Colorado Rockies on July 31, the conservative megadonor wondered how his party had wound up cowering in fear of the latest tweet from a former reality star. “My concern is Donald Trump will depress the Republican vote and hurt down-ballot candidates,” said Pope, a close ally of North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory. “We’re going to lose races because of him. I just hope it’s not all lost.”
Republicans groan that the difficult task of keeping their Senate majority gets tougher with each outré remark. Which is why the RNC is considering shifting some cash and staff away from the presidential race and toward down-ballot contests. That plan is already in motion among powerful outside groups that typically spend hundreds of millions of dollars on behalf of the party nominee. “There’s going to have to be some resource reallocation,” says a senior Republican official familiar with internal party deliberations. A second senior party official routinely instructs Senate campaign managers to distance their candidates from Trump. “Don’t worry about the appearances,” the official said on a recent conference call. “Worry about winning.”
That explains why Republicans running for office this year don’t meet Trump’s plane at airports or introduce him at rallies. In some places, the avoidance strategy seems to be working. Senator Pat Toomey is in a statistical tie in his re-election bid in Pennsylvania, a state where Trump trails by about 10 points. In the key swing state of Florida, Senator Marco Rubio is running ahead in his re-election bid even as Trump narrowly trails Clinton. But in New Hampshire, Trump’s troubles may be dragging down Ayotte, who plummeted from a virtual tie to 10 points down in a recent poll.
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Internal and public polling suggests that the party will see record numbers of split-ticket voters who shun Trump but remain open to supporting vulnerable congressional candidates. Traditionally, these voters would be among the last targets for the party’s get-out-the-vote effort. But that might change if Trump’s poll numbers remain moribund. That’s why Priebus told the nominee that the RNC would soon decide which voters to prioritize. Trump, who is helping the party collect cash, is mystified by this account. “Why would they state that when I’m raising millions of dollars for them?” he asked TIME.
Like the rest of the party, Trump’s staff has been flummoxed by his political naiveté. They describe a candidate who doesn’t understand the basics of modern campaigns, from why you knock on doors to how to read a poll to why he should be dialing for dollars more aggressively. His headquarters has enough palace intrigue and warring fiefs to rival the fictional badlands of Westeros. “You’re always afraid of getting fired,” says one staffer, “but it’s his fault, not ours.”
These staff members are still cashing checks but have begun to lose faith that their boss can or should win the top prize in American politics. Most highly regarded Republican operatives have stayed away from the campaign, wary of being blackballed for future gigs. “If someone applied for a job and brought in a résumé that had Trump 2016 on it,” says a GOP fundraising consultant, “I wouldn’t give them an interview.”
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Trump has made a sport of defying prediction, party orthodoxy and political gravity. He thinks he’s on to something he alone can see, and if he is right, it wouldn’t be the first time. For a candidate who has staked his campaign on a pessimistic vision of the nation, he still manages to summon a sense of optimism despite the darkening polls. “I actually think we’re doing better,” Trump says. “I may be wrong, but I think we’re doing much better than anybody understands.”
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This TIME piece on Trump from @aaltman82 @ZekeJMiller @Philip_Elliott is just wondrous. https://t.co/P7Vc9S0o7U
— Alexis Levinson (@alexis_levinson) August 11, 2016
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