http://www.weeklystandard.com/trump-is-the-titanic/article/2003970Trump Is the Titanic
And how Republicans can save the party down-ballot.6:00 AM, AUG 25, 2016 | By JONATHAN V. LAST
What I was trying emphasize with all the poll talk Wednesday is that this race is over. There is no coming back from where Trump is now. A candidate with high-favorables and a semi-competent campaign—say, Bob Dole—couldn't do it. A conspiracy-obsessed narcissist who is hated by 60 percent of the country and whose operation spends more money on hats and private planes than on voter turnout isn't going to do it.
Here's the #realtalk: Donald Trump is not going to be elected president. And if you're serious about blunting Hillary Clinton's agenda, then you need to accept this reality and start working to save (1) as many marginal Senate seats as possible and (2) the House.
I'm continually amazed by how many prominent Republicans keep demanding that the party support Trump. They're like junior officers on the Titanic insisting that the ship can be saved so long as no one uses any of the lifeboats.
This isn't about "moral superiority," as my friend Bill Bennett uncharitably put it a few days ago. It's about saving enough Republican positions that the Congress can check the worst of Clinton's initiatives. (And if you think control of Congress doesn't matter because Republicans roll over all the time, remember how much damage Obama did during the first 24 months of his administration, versus the final 72.)
The calculation being made by pro-Trump Republican elites is, I suspect, that if you cut off Trump now and publicly disavow him, you lose more votes than you gain. Their thinking is that by continuing to prop up Trump while criticizing the worst of his excesses, they can manage him to a 4- or 5-point loss, which preserves the House and at least a few of the marginal Republican Senate seats.
That's not crazy. But it does fly in the face of what polling is telling us. Look across the board and see how far Republican senators are running ahead of Trump: Bob Portman is 11 points ahead of Trump in Ohio. Rubio is 10 points ahead of him in Florida. Ditto Kelly Ayotte in New Hampshire. And yet all of those seats—plus Pat Toomey in Pennsylvania, Richard Burr in North Carolina, and Roy Blunt in Missouri—are very tight races for Republicans.
Which raises a couple of questions: (1) Do you think that these down-ballot candidates will be able to defy gravity for three more months? (2) Do you think the RNC can actually manage Trump's behavior down the stretch as he gets closer and closer to losing? After all, this is a man with no—zero, zilch—loyalty or interest in the health of the party.
So Republican have to choose. They can continue to yoke themselves to an unstable, wildly-unpopular nominee who cares not a whit if their candidates win or lose. Or they can cut him loose, disavow him, and make an explicit pitch to the large segment of voters who are either (a) voting for Clinton as the lesser of two evils or (b) holding their noses for Trump. If you go by the polling, those two groups add up to about half of all voters. Which in practice makes them something like two-thirds of all persuadable voters. Tell them that you're not endorsing Trump, that people should vote their consciences, and that they want voters to understand that they're ready to stand up for the interest of [INSERT STATE] when the dishonest, liberal Hillary Clinton is president.
Just as a question of mathematics, this is an easy call. The only argument against it is "Oh, but we don't want to anger Trump supporters!"
I hear that a lot. But like most Trumpian arguments, it doesn't hold up.
Remember when Trump went around telling Republicans that even if they didn't like him, they had no choice but to vote for him? "If you really like Donald Trump, that's great," he said. "But if you don't, you have to vote for me anyway. You know why? Supreme Court judges, Supreme Court judges. Have no choice, sorry, sorry, sorry. You have no choice."
Well, if that's true, then why isn't the converse also true? Why won't Trump die-hards have no choice but to pull the lever for a Senate Republican who disavows Trump? After all, Trump supporters have an important, controversial piece of legislation that Trump can't get passed with a Democratic Senate.
Even if you don't like Republican Senator X, you have to vote for him anyway. You know why? The Wall. Have no choice, sorry, sorry, sorry. The Wall.
If you really want to stop Hillary Clinton's agenda, you start by understanding the world as it is. You can continue throwing good money after bad. Or you can try to save some Senate seats and do everything in your power to hold the House.
Institutional Republicans still clinging to Trump are working against these goals. It's one more example of how Trumpism corrupts.
