Republican US presidential candidate Donald Trump might have done just enough in Sunday’s presidential debate to keep his leaky presidential campaign afloat — and that might have put Republicans considering abandoning him in an even tougher position.
Had Trump imploded, the flow of lawmakers and party luminaries who deserted him at the weekend over lewd comments he made about women on a video likely would have become a torrent, increasing demands for him to drop out of the race.
However, that did not happen.
Illustration: Mountain People
Now, Republicans who have seen their party torn apart by Trump’s candidacy are once again faced with a familiar dilemma: publicly abandon a badly wounded candidate who is endangering closely contested congressional races or stand behind him in the dimming hope that he can still win them the White House.
The Manhattan real-estate mogul delivered a feistier and more disciplined performance than at the first debate, hammering Democratic US presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton on her use of a private e-mail server while she was US secretary of state, and again raising decades-old accusations of sexual misconduct against her husband, former US president Bill Clinton.
That likely endeared him to the rowdy supporters who have packed arenas across the nation for more than a year, while perhaps doing little to reel in the more moderate voters in swing states that his campaign will need to defeat Hillary Clinton in the Nov. 8 election.
“His no-holds barred approach to Hillary tonight is what conservatives have wanted to see out of a candidate since Bill Clinton was in office,” said Craig Robinson, former political director of the Iowa Republican Party. “The Republican base and talk radio will love this performance.”
However, the party is still hitched to a deeply flawed candidate who has especially struggled with women, college-educated and suburban voters.
A recent Reuters/Ipsos poll showed close to 20 percent of Americans were still undecided on which candidate to support. Sixty percent of those were women.
A CNN poll taken immediately following the debate showed Republicans have reason to be anxious. Viewers said Clinton had beaten Trump in the encounter, 57 percent to 34 percent.
The furor over the 2005 video footage, in which Trump bragged about groping and trying to seduce women, led dozens of lawmakers to denounce him, including US Senator John McCain. Their condemnation plunged the party into its worst crisis since the resignation in 1974 of then-US president Richard Nixon, a Republican.
The House Republican Conference, a body composed of the almost 250 Republicans in the US House of Representatives, met on Monday to discuss the foundering Trump campaign.
US House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan pointedly disinvited Trump for a joint appearance in Wisconsin that had been scheduled for Saturday following publication of the video.
All but six of the 40 Republican officeholders whose races are considered competitive in the election have condemned Trump’s comments in the footage, although only three members of that group have called for him to drop out.
Since the release of the video, the party’s governing body, the Republican National Committee (RNC), has offered no guidance to local party officials on how to handle questions about it.
“There hasn’t been one e-mail or one phone call or anything as to what the guidance is from the RNC going forward,” an RNC official who asked to remain unidentified said.
The video intensified talk in Republican circles about diverting funds from Trump to prop up House of Representatives and Senate candidates who might find themselves in newfound jeopardy because of the backlash.
“It’s well past time to cut all ties with Trump and focus on preserving the Republican Congress and down ballot offices. Immediately,” said John Weaver, a veteran Republican strategist.
Republican officials have another worry — that Trump’s unpopularity might lead many Republican voters to stay at home on election day.
Against this backdrop of panic and condemnation, Trump on Sunday sought to rally the party’s base with a fresh barrage of provocative attacks on Clinton that will give the media something other than the video to talk about.
He offered a blistering critique of her handling of US foreign policy while secretary of state and brought his rally cry for her to be jailed to the debate stage.
He also carried out a threat to make an issue of her husband’s sexual history.
In doing so, Trump might have stopped the bleeding, but he did nothing to stop the worrying.
Additional reporting by Amanda Becker, Emily Flitter, Ginger Gibson and Steve Holland
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