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Politico: Republicans and Democrats View Trump’s Quest for the White House As Essentially Lost
Trump, unbound: Deserted and detested, the GOP nominee feels free to tell people what he really thinks.-Snip-
As his fortunes sour, anger is trumping cogent calculation, and his defiance appears to be increasing in proportion to his decline in the polls. As Republican support was eroding over the weekend, Trump’s campaign worked together talking points for surrogates as part of a defiant effort to attack those lawmakers for bailing on him. After he tweeted Sunday that they’re all pathetic, Newt Gingrich suggested after Sunday night’s debate that they would regret jumping ship so quickly. Campaign manager Kellyanne Conway accused some defecting Republican lawmakers of being sexual harassers themselves.
-snip-
But even scoring what many characterized as a base-settling win on Sunday night, Republicans and Democrats alike view Trump’s quest for the White House as essentially lost — Monday morning’s NBC poll showed Clinton opening up an 11-point lead over Trump in a four-way race.
Knowing it, he is now behaving like a lame-duck candidate, intent on settling scores, going after the Clintons with a vengeance and scorching vacillating establishment types who are (in Trump’s view) knifing him to save their own corrupt hides. His campaign is expected to bring Bill Clinton’s accusers onto the trail and sources close to the GOP nominee indicate that more sordid allegations about the Clintons’ personal lives may be only days away.
For Republicans, it’s already far more terrible than imagined. The first returns from public and private polling taken over the past week show a massive drop-off in GOP down-ballot support, leading many strategists to concede the likelihood of a Democratic Senate and the long unthinkable possibility of also losing the House — a frightening realization that precipitated Ryan’s distancing and the dozens of senators and members of Congress who pulled their endorsements over the weekend.
As his fortunes sour, anger is trumping cogent calculation, and his defiance appears to be increasing in proportion to his decline in the polls. As Republican support was eroding over the weekend, Trump’s campaign worked together talking points for surrogates as part of a defiant effort to attack those lawmakers for bailing on him. After he tweeted Sunday that they’re all pathetic, Newt Gingrich suggested after Sunday night’s debate that they would regret jumping ship so quickly. Campaign manager Kellyanne Conway accused some defecting Republican lawmakers of being sexual harassers themselves.
-snip-
But even scoring what many characterized as a base-settling win on Sunday night, Republicans and Democrats alike view Trump’s quest for the White House as essentially lost — Monday morning’s NBC poll showed Clinton opening up an 11-point lead over Trump in a four-way race.
Knowing it, he is now behaving like a lame-duck candidate, intent on settling scores, going after the Clintons with a vengeance and scorching vacillating establishment types who are (in Trump’s view) knifing him to save their own corrupt hides. His campaign is expected to bring Bill Clinton’s accusers onto the trail and sources close to the GOP nominee indicate that more sordid allegations about the Clintons’ personal lives may be only days away.
For Republicans, it’s already far more terrible than imagined. The first returns from public and private polling taken over the past week show a massive drop-off in GOP down-ballot support, leading many strategists to concede the likelihood of a Democratic Senate and the long unthinkable possibility of also losing the House — a frightening realization that precipitated Ryan’s distancing and the dozens of senators and members of Congress who pulled their endorsements over the weekend.
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/10/donald-trump-campaign-republicans-229577
