Inside the scramble to save the GOP from Trump
A portrait of a party in meltdown.
By Katie Glueck and Kyle Cheney
10/12/16 05:12 AM EDT
Matt Borges had had enough.
The Ohio Republican Party chairman had spent a crazed Saturday on the phone, inundated by demands to respond to newly leaked audio of Donald Trump bragging about sexual assault, and by questions about whether Trump was even staying in the race. So early Sunday morning, Borges called the Republican nominee himself.
“Are you considering withdrawing from the race?” Borges asked Trump, fearful that there might be more devastating revelations about his party’s nominee still to come.
“Absolutely not,” Trump replied, a rebuke to the slew of spooked Republican lawmakers who were calling on him to quit. According to Borges, he warned Trump that he needed to “knock it out of the park” at the presidential debate that night to survive — and they hung up agreeing to talk after the contest.
But by Monday, Trump surrogates — and increasingly the candidate himself — seemed just as focused on tearing into the Republicans defecting from Trump as they did on talking up Trump’s debate performance. That prompted Borges to send an email to the other 167 members of the Republican National Committee.
“Those candidates and officeholders deserve the leeway to follow their conscience without fear of retribution from the party,” wrote the swing state party chair and former Kasich supporter. “And the criticism of these folks from our nominee, his campaign, and others within the party needs to stop immediately.”
more
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/10/donald-trump-gop-229653