Republicans Wonder Can Trump Recover From 'Worst Week in Presidential History'

[Libertine]

Republicans Wonder If Trump Can Recover From 'Worst Week in Presidential History'

"Trump has now successfully entered into the zone of being a laughingstock and a punchline."

"Trump is in serious trouble."

"His bizarre rants about Ms. Alicia Machado will further alienate women and Hispanics. And nearly everybody has to wonder about his habit of tweeting out insults in the middle of the night."

"Trump had the worst week any presidential nominee has had in modern American history. There are no parallels. Trump's debate performance and its fallout put Trump into a place that is not survivable."

"Voters don't want to be for a nut-job."

The worst week of Donald Trump's presidential campaign began with a widely criticized debate performance and ended with a bombshell report that he could have avoided paying federal income taxes for 18 years.

In between, the blustery Republican lashed out at a Latina beauty queen in a series of 5 a.m. tweets, faced opposition from conservative editorial boards, went after Bill Clinton's history of infidelity while refusing to discuss his own, was found to have appeared in a Playboy soft core porn film, mocked Hillary Clinton's recent battle with pneumonia, and told a crowd she "could actually be crazy."

"This could be the worst week in presidential history for any candidate," said Rick Tyler, a Republican strategist, "I certainly wouldn't know how to top it."

“He has now successfully entered into the zone of being a laughingstock and a punchline.”
Rick Tyler, a Republican strategist.

Many Republicans were left wondering whether Trump could recover or if he had effectively lost the race in the past seven days.

"The hole that Trump has dug for himself is very deep," said Joe Watkins, a former aide to President George W. Bush. "Given the large viewing audience for the first debate and week of big missteps by Trump, it could be too late to turn it around."

The Trump campaign and its allies seemed uncharacteristically frozen in place as the headlines mounted, unable to go on the offensive against Clinton as events spiraled beyond their control. Trump's own advisers publicly pleaded with him to be more disciplined.

Newt Gingrich, the former Republican House speaker and a vocal surrogate, called it "a lost week, a week which has hurt him, which has shaken his own supporters" in a Friday appearance on Fox News.

The sequence of events further complicates Trump's path to victory.

"It wasn't a bad week. It was a horrible week," said Republican pollster Frank Luntz.

"His staff has no control over him whatsoever. It's their responsibility to keep him focused on what it takes to win, and they have lost it" Luntz said.

'Trump Is In Serious Trouble'

A Fox News poll of likely voters conducted after the Sept. 26 debate found that suburban women favor Clinton over Trump by 20 points, despite her low favorable ratings. One clue as to why: 69 percent of them said Trump lacks the temperament to serve effectively as president. Among white women, a group that Republican Mitt Romney won by 14 points in 2012, Trump enjoys only a 4-point lead, with 59 percent expressing doubts about his temperament.

Polling since the debate aren't good for Trump. Swing state surveys taken after the showdown show him trailing Clinton by 6 points in Nevada, by 4 in Florida, by 7 in Michigan and by 7 in New Hampshire. Losing each of those states would almost certainly close off Trump's path to the White House.

"Trump is in serious trouble" said Jack Pitney, a political science professor at Claremont McKenna College.

"His bizarre rants about Ms. Alicia Machado will further alienate women and Hispanics. And nearly everybody has to wonder about his habit of tweeting out insults in the middle of the night," Pitney said.

Trump' actions last week are "merely a summation of his campaign as a whole and why Trump was the most problematic candidate the party could have nominated to run against Hillary Clinton," said Kevin Madden, an adviser to Mitt Romney's 2012 campaign. "He has less than 40 days to turn this race back into a referendum on his opponent. There are no days left to spare and he can't have another week like the last one."

John Weaver, the chief political strategist for Ohio Governor John Kasich said: "He had probably the worst week any presidential nominee has had in modern American history. There are no parallels." He argued that the debate performance and its fallout put Trump "into a place that I don't think is survivable."

Tyler was equally pessimistic about Trump's hopes. "He took a bad debate performance—which is survivable, it happens—and he turned it into the worst week of post-debate spin in presidential history. It was just self-inflicted," he said. "He has now successfully entered into the zone of being a laughingstock and a punchline."

The bad news for Trump comes with early voting under way in some states and voters making up their minds. And the fact that Trump's problems are dominating the political chatter drowns out efforts by his campaign to put Clinton on defensive over her own controversies.

Weaver said the damage to Trump's image is irreparable with non-white voters, millennials and suburban women, the latter being a bloc that historically trends Republican.

"They don't want to be for her. But they don't want to be for a nut-job," he said. "And if he could just pass the nut-job bar, which is as low as it can get, he might win. But he seems disinclined."


Bloomberg
10-2-16

http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/ar...orst-week-ever