Date: 2024-10-10 Page is: DBtxt003.php txt00012033
Original article: https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?tab=wm#inbox/157aee59c4791ef9
Peter Burgess COMMENTARY
Peter Burgess
More than Trump, the Republican Party was the biggest loser in last night’s debate
Donald Trump was again the center of attention during last night's debate at Washington University in St. Louis. (Photo by Melina Mara/The Washington Post)
Donald Trump was again the center of attention during last night's debate at Washington University in St. Louis. (Photo by Melina Mara/The Washington Post)
With Breanne Deppisch and Elise Viebeck
THE BIG IDEA: Most politicians believed the Republican civil war would not flare up again until Nov. 9, the morning after the election. But the battle over the future of the party has arrived a month early.
Donald Trump showed during last night’s second presidential debate in St. Louis that he is willing to go down in flames, and he is happy to take down-ballot Republicans with him.
Blood is the metaphor of the morning. There is an incredible amount of talk about “bleeding” in the post-debate conversation. Literally dozens of news stories ponder whether The Donald slowed or stopped the bleeding. The emerging conventional wisdom seems to be that Trump but did not cauterize the wound.
Indeed, the GOP nominee threw just enough red meat to convince hardcore loyalists to stick with him and thwarted efforts to push him off the ticket.
With dozens of high-profile defections over the weekend, it now feels inevitable that he will lose the election. The short-term question is how badly. The long-term question is how much damage Trump does to the brand of his adopted party.
The previous chairman of the Republican National Committee tweeted this half an hour into the debate:
-- The Republican establishment is still coming to grips with the reality that Trump cannot be replaced. Top officials acknowledge privately that Trump’s self-immolation has now put the House in play, with the very real prospect that millions of more moderate GOP voters – especially in the suburbs -- will stay home. The odds of Republicans retaining their Senate majority have dropped precipitously since Friday morning.There is a conference call for House Republicans at 11 a.m. Eastern and another for the 168 members of the Republican National Committee at 5 p.m. “Trump is a battered, bruised and angry candidate, and therefore more unpredictable than ever,” Dan Balz writes. “For Trump, this is a final roll of the dice. For Republicans this is about more than the presidency and they know they will be living with the fallout from this campaign long after the results of this election are known on the night of Nov. 8.” This dynamic has accelerated the timetable for the blame game that usually happens in the wake of an election. -- There were several noteworthy shows of solidarity with the nominee last night: On Saturday, Mike Pence issued a statement saying he was “offended” by his running mate’s words and “cannot defend them.” But whatever private reservations he may still harbor, he publicly fell in line last night – posting this after the debate: (#MAGA stands for Make America Great Again.) Appearing on CNN this morning, the Indiana governor added: 'It's absolutely false to suggest at any point and time we considered dropping off this ticket. It's the greatest honor of my life.” RNC chairman Reince Priebus also showed public support by flying to the debate on Trump’s jet: NBC, citing “a source within the RNC,” said Priebus has told staffers to do 'what's best' for them as aides at every level fear working on the Trump campaign's behalf could damage their reputation. But the RNC’s chief spokesman pushed back on the report: And Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway lashed out at the Republican lawmakers who are jumping ship by saying that “some of them” sexually harass women in the Capitol. She did not name names but told MSNBC’s Chris Matthews last night that some of the members are known for “rubbing up against girls” and “sticking their tongues down women’s throats uninvited.” -- Conservative Washington Examiner columnist Byron York argues that “Trump's performance will shut down Republican defections from his struggling campaign, at least for now”: “Say you were a Republican lawmaker contemplating breaking with Trump. You didn't do it Saturday, when several GOP officials jumped, because you wanted to see how Trump would do in the debate Sunday night. Now you've seen it — a more aggressive, hard-hitting, and focused effort than Trump's losing performance in Debate One — and you're probably not going to abandon Trump now.” Weekly Standard Executive Editor Bill Kristol concurs but describes this as a fatal mistake: “Here's the problem: Some Republican leaders could well make the mistake of thinking that because Trump wasn't destroyed at the debate, there isn't now a dire need to act. They could decide that because Trump didn't dissolve into a puddle in the center of the town hall, the situation has stabilized, and the status quo is sustainable. That would be a fatal mistake. The Declaration of Independence identified the problem: ‘All experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.’ Republicans may be disposed to suffer, rather than take bold action, contrary to the forms to which they are accustomed, to shove Trump aside. Republican leaders may think, or hope, that Trump is a sufferable evil. They will be cruelly disappointed in that judgment.” The Washington bureau chief of National Review also sees this as a paradox: As does the conservative on the New York Times opinion page: A BuzzFeed writer who wrote a book on the GOP field says everyone he talked with thinks Trump will lose, BUT... -- A chorus of Republican strategists with experience at the highest levels of presidential campaigns, meanwhile, described the debate as an unmitigated disaster for Trump: The head of Jeb Bush’s super PAC: Mitt Romney's chief pollster in 2012: Romney’s chief strategist: John Kasich’s chief strategist: -- The result of all this is that the GOP is in a state of total paralysis: “One member of the House Republican leadership, conceding its majority was now in jeopardy, compared the situation to the 2006 scandal involving a Florida congressman’s inappropriate conduct with congressional pages. If that scandal was a house fire, this lawmaker said, Mr. Trump had brought on the political equivalent of a nuclear attack,” Alex Burns, Jonathan Martin and Maggie Haberman report in the New York Times. As Steven Law, a longtime confidant of Mitch McConnell who runs the main GOP super PAC focused on saving the Senate, put it: “The Republican Party is caught in a theater fire; people are just running to different exits as fast as they can.' -- Last night was proof point number 4,358: Trump cannot change. Even if he tried. Even if he wanted to. And he does not want to… -- Wavering party leaders said they needed to see Trump show real contrition for the crude and predatory comments he made about women in 2005. Trump showed none. Instead, he went on the attack. “I’m very embarrassed by it,” Trump said in a classic non-apology (being embarrassed something appeared in the newspaper is different than being embarrassed about the substance of what was said.) “I hate it. But it’s locker-room talk. It’s one of those things. I will knock the hell out of ISIS. If you look at Bill Clinton, far worse. Mine were words and his was action. What he did to women, there’s never been anybody in the history of politics in this nation who’s been so abusive to women. . . . Hillary Clinton attacked those same women and attacked them viciously.” campaign-2016-revisited-11048-03-a.jpg. 'You'd be in jail': Trump swipes at Clinton during debate Trump tells Clinton that, if he was president, 'you'd be in jail.' -- His scorched-earth tactics were the worst-case scenario that many GOP leaders had feared. Most chillingly, he promised he would try to send Clinton to jail if elected by appointing a special prosecutor to go after her. He called his opponent “the Devil.” And, as she spoke, he got in her personal space and lurked around the stage – making Rick Lazio look polite. He also repeatedly clashed with the moderators, insisting that he was not getting as much time as her (even though, by the final tally, he got more.) Desperate, he threw the kitchen sink. He falsely accused HRC of “laughing” at a 12-year-old rape victim. He blamed her for her husband’s infidelity. “Trump even seemed to blame Clinton for the death of Capt. Humayun Khan — a Muslim soldier killed in Iraq in 2004 whose parents spoke at the Democratic convention — because as a senator she voted in favor of the Iraq War, which he himself also once supported,” Jenna Johnson notes. “He repeatedly accused Clinton of lying, being an ‘ineffective’ senator and making money off her political position. He said she had hate in her heart and didn’t care about those living in inner-city poverty.” Trump holds press conference with Clinton accusers -- Another important takeaway: Breitbart is now fully in control of Trump’s campaign. An hour before the debate, Trump invited a small group of reporters to observe what was billed as his final debate preparations. When they arrived in Trump’s sixth-floor conference room at the Four Seasons Hotel in St. Louis, they found the candidate in a highly unusual scene — glowering as he sat alongside four women who claimed they had been mistreated by the Clintons. “The quartet included Paula Jones, who accused Bill Clinton of sexual harassment in the early 1990s, and Juanita Broaddrick, who accused him of raping her in 1978,” Bob Costa reports. “Watching as the news conference unfolded was one of the men who orchestrated it, Stephen K. Bannon, Trump’s campaign chief executive and the political provocateur who has long targeted the Clintons as well as the Republican establishment through his conservative website, Breitbart.” Trump was then going to seat the four women in his family’s box, but Frank J. Fahrenkopf, the debate commission’s co-chairman and a former Republican National Committee chairman, caught wind of the plot and immediately moved to put an end to it. “Fahrenkopf tartly warned a Trump staffer that if the campaign tried to put the four women in the family box, security personnel would remove them,” Bob Costa, Dan Balz and Phil Rucker scoop. “The campaign’s plan, which was closely held and unknown to several of Trump’s top aides, was thwarted just minutes before it could be executed … The gambit to give Bill Clinton’s accusers prime seats was devised by Trump campaign chief executive Stephen K. Bannon and Jared Kushner, the candidate’s son-in-law, and approved personally by Trump. The four women — three of whom have alleged Bill Clinton sexually assaulted or harassed them years ago — were to walk in the debate hall at the same time as the 42nd president and confront him in front of a national television audience.' The line between a supposed 'news' site and the campaign is porous, to say the least: From a top GOP elections lawyer:
-- The stunt was all about shoring up Trump’s base, not expanding it. “In an alternate universe, Republicans would have been thrilled at the spectacle,” David Weigel writes. “In addition to Benghazi, Trump hammered Clinton on Syria, Obamacare, her handling of classified material — so many of the attack lines that the GOP has long dreamed of throwing in her face. Yet, for all of Trump’s ability to go aggressively after Clinton, even saying she should be in jail, Sunday night’s debate was likely all the more frustrating for many Republicans who see their nominee as too damaged at this stage to effectively block her from the White House.”New York Magazine Ed Kilgore says going full Breitbart “will remind panicky Republicans who are thinking about disassociating themselves from him (and perhaps fantasizing about dumping him) that they are courting a bloody intraparty civil war for years if they go too far”: “Yes, congressional Republicans may soon change their campaign messages to emphasize their determination to ‘rein in Hillary Clinton,’ which will encourage ticket-splitting and hurt Trump. But as the initial panic subsides, the stampede to reject or defenestrate him as the nominee will subside as well.” University of Virginia political handicapper Larry Sabato suspects that the base loved Trump’s performance, and that it will further drive a long-term wedge between party leaders and the voters.
-- There are parallels to 1964. For the next half century, Republicans will judge other Republicans by where they stood on Trump in October 2016. In contrast to Barry Goldwater, it seems quite unlikely that history will be kind to those who stood by the GOP nominee through his final hours.Politicians, always fixated on the next election, tend not to think about legacy until late in their careers, when they’ve obtained the power that they covet. But the smart ones are thinking about legacy after last night’s debate. The ones who have a sense of the sweep of history know that where they stood on Trump at this moment could very well wind up in their obituaries...
-- Trump is also doing more to help Clinton get millennials on board than anything she possibly could. The risk is that a class of young people who would become Republicans identify as independents or even Democrats because of his outlandishness. The College Republicans at Washington University, which hosted the debate, declined to endorse Trump earlier this year. Rubin Schuckit, the president of the group, said the members did not want to back him “mainly because of his temperament.' 'Typically I’m prone to say people overreact to things, but I think people’s reactions to Donald Trump’s tape are measured and it vindicates our decision not to endorse him,” he told our Kayla Epstein. Lilly Wurm, a Wash U freshman and member of the College Republicans, added: 'Like everyone else, Trump scares us too. He doesn’t align with who we are as a club. And we hope that we can just look forward to 2020.'Donald Trump walks in the rain with Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi as they arrive at a rally in Tampa in August. (Loren Elliott/Tampa Bay Times via AP) Donald Trump walks in the rain with Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi as they arrive at a rally in Tampa in August. (Loren Elliott/Tampa Bay Times via AP) -- Trump’s collapse has already ruined many political careers, and it will probably ruin more… The ambitious Republicans who submitted and capitulated to Trump after he personally insulted them and their families continue to be personally humiliated. Philip Rucker looks at some of the Republican leaders who stood by him and excused his behavior after attacks against women, the disabled, Latino immigrants, Muslim Americans, Syrian refugees, prisoners of war, Gold Star parents and others. Two examples from Rucker’s story: “In Florida, Attorney General Pam Bondi, who also has ambitions for higher office, stepped forward during the primaries as one of Trump’s most loyal spokeswomen. But she got caught up in a Trump scandal over her political group’s acceptance of an undisclosed and unlawful $25,000 contribution from the Trump Foundation and her office’s subsequent decision not to investigate alleged fraud at Trump University.” “In Virginia, Corey Stewart, a county-level official with eyes on the governorship, appointed himself Trump’s ‘mini-me.’ He gave fiery introductions at rallies across the commonwealth, and on Friday, he defended Trump’s bragging about groping women and aggressively pursuing sex with one who was married. ‘He acted like a frat boy, as a lot of guys do,’ Stewart said.” “Everything Trump touches dies,” said Republican consultant Rick Wilson, who is advising independent candidate Evan McMullin. “This is going to last forever,” he told Phil. For years now, Democrats will be able to roll out TV ads and say, ‘When John Smith says today he’s for a brighter future, remember who he stood by: Donald Trump. He stood by Donald Trump’s misogyny, racism, sexism and stupidity.’” “The Republican Party will look like Berlin circa 1945,” added GOP operative Steve Schmidt. “The wreckage will take a substantial amount of time to pick up. There will be a restoration, but it is going to require a monumental feat of leadership by someone who has not yet revealed themselves to the American people.” -- Those who did not capitulate have been completely vindicated by the past 48 hours. Jeff Flake, Ben Sasse and Kasich all resisted pressure from Priebus and will benefit politically… The junior senator from Nebraska took a victory lap of sorts last night: -- Schmidt, one of John McCain’s top advisers in 2008, said this weekend’s donnybrook “has exposed the intellectual rot in the Republican Party.” “This candidacy – the magnitude of its disgrace to the country is almost impossible to articulate,” he said during an appearance on “Meet the Press” Sunday. “It has exposed, at a massive level, the hypocrisy, the modern-day money changers in the temple like Jerry Falwell Jr. … What we have seen – and the danger for all of the candidates – is that over the course of the last year these candidates have repeatedly put their party ahead of their country.” -- The son of former President Ronald Reagan had gotten behind Trump but withdrew his endorsement last week after the GOP nominee claimed with no evidence that Hillary had been unfaithful to Bill. -- This is why Chris Cillizza put Pence on his debate losers list: “Look, it's been hard enough sharing the ticket with Trump over the past week. But, the Indiana governor had to grimace when Trump said that A) they hadn't spoken about Syria and that B) Pence's position was wrong. Rumors that Pence is going to leave the ticket — over this or anything else — seem overblown to me. He knew what he was getting into when he said he would run as Trump's V.P. But still, the public rebuke with tens of millions of people watching couldn't have been pleasant for Pence.” FACT CHECK: -- Trump lied with impunity throughout much of the debate. Our Fact Checkers flag 25 dubious statements from both candidates. Six highlights from Glenn Kessler and Michelle Ye Hee Lee: “Clinton did not laugh at a rape victim.”
“There’s no evidence Clinton deleted the emails in anticipation of the subpoena, and FBI director James Comey has said his agency’s investigation found no evidence any work-related emails were ‘intentionally deleted in an effort to conceal them.’”
“To support the debunked notion that Clinton’s campaign originated ‘birther’ rumors during the 2008 presidential campaign, Trump once again referenced longtime Clinton ally Sidney Blumenthal and Clinton campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle. But he’s grasping at straws — and once again refused to apologize for his own role in promoting the birther fable.” “Trump is simply wrong when he says the United States is the highest taxed nation in the world.”
“Trump made a ludicrous claim that U.S. ambassador Chris Stevens made 600 requests for help before he perished in the attack on a U.S. diplomatic facility in Benghazi.”
“Premiums (under Obamacare) are expected to increase overall in 2017, but Trump is cherry-picking from the highest proposed increases in the insurance marketplace.”
There were several additional falsehoods they did not have time to cover.
If you missed it, our video team summarized the debate into three minutes:
The second Clinton-Trump presidential debate, in three minutes
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WHILE YOU WERE SLEEPING:
-- Two instant polls show Clinton won the debate:
CNN/ORC: 57 percent said Clinton won to 34 percent for Trump. But 63 percent thought Trump outperformed expectations.
YouGov: 47 percent thought Clinton won, while 42 percent said Trump did.
-- An NBC News/SurveyMonkey poll that was in the field after Friday’s revelations finds that 63 percent of likely voters do NOT think Trump respects women. That’s an 8 point jump from four days before the emergence of the tape.
69 percent of women now say that Trump does not respect women, up 5 points from the last survey. And the number of men who said the same jumped 10 points (55 percent).
12 percent of likely Republican voters said Trump should drop out of the race because of his 2005 comments.
Clinton now leads Trump in a four way matchup, 46 to his 41 percent (with Johnson at 8 and Stein at 3 percent.) And half of likely voters—50 percent—said they have heard or have been following coverage of the 2005 tape of Trump making inappropriate comments about women 'a lot.' An additional 30 percent of voters said they've heard or have been following 'some' coverage.