The Price of Silence on Trump

The main goal of the Re­pub­lic­an Na­tion­al Com­mit­tee is to en­sure that Re­pub­lic­ans get elec­ted to of­fice. So it’s re­mark­able how im­mob­il­ized that party lead­er­ship has be­come at the pro­spect of a hos­tile takeover by Don­ald Trump, whose nom­in­a­tion would likely cost Re­pub­lic­ans con­trol of the Sen­ate and put the party’s siz­able House ma­jor­ity in play.   

That’s the polit­ic­al real­ity of the mo­ment. The GOP’s rank-and-file is spend­ing more time ra­tion­al­iz­ing how a Trump nom­in­a­tion wouldn’t be such a polit­ic­al dis­aster than it is work­ing to pre­vent a Trump tor­nado from pul­ver­iz­ing the party’s siz­able con­gres­sion­al ma­jor­it­ies.  

House Speak­er Paul Ry­an, who is at risk of los­ing his speak­er­ship with Trump at the top of the tick­et, merely ex­pressed his re­spect for GOP primary voters when offered the chance to cri­ti­cize the GOP front-run­ner in a re­cent CN­BC in­ter­view. Re­pub­lic­an Na­tion­al Com­mit­tee chair­man Re­ince Priebus has re­mained as­sidu­ously neut­ral, pledging to sup­port the GOP nom­in­ee no mat­ter who emerges. Re­pub­lic­an cam­paign com­mit­tees, which of­ten spend re­sources to un­der­mine un­elect­able can­did­ates for the Sen­ate and House in primar­ies, are privately alarmed but pub­licly si­lent at the pro­spect of Trump mak­ing life miser­able for swing-state sen­at­ors such as Ohio’s Rob Port­man and New Hamp­shire’s Kelly Ayotte.

Make no mis­take: The pre­pon­der­ance of polling sug­gests that Trump would lose in a rout against Hil­lary Clin­ton. A CBS/New York Times poll this week shows Trump trail­ing Clin­ton by 10 points (50-40 per­cent), even though the Demo­crat’s own fa­vor­ab­il­ity rat­ings are in dis­mal ter­rit­ory. Trump is viewed fa­vor­ably by few­er than one-quarter of voters, even though he’s well-known by nearly every­one. Even if he proves suc­cess­ful in turn­ing out blue-col­lar voters, sur­veys show that he turns off around one-quarter of the GOP elect­or­ate and will be a mo­bil­iz­ing force for Demo­crats who have been luke­warm to­ward Clin­ton.

Trump’s biggest fans of­ten stay home on Elec­tion Day, leav­ing him “in the un­charted ter­rit­ory of be­ing hated by the most im­port­ant mem­bers of the GOP co­ali­tion,” said Re­pub­lic­an strategist Brad Todd.

When it comes to Sen­ate and House races, a com­bin­a­tion of de­pressed Re­pub­lic­an turnout and an en­er­gized Demo­crat­ic base would make a tox­ic brew in Novem­ber. Be­ne­fit­ing from a fa­vor­able map, Sen­ate Demo­crats have re­cruited sol­id can­did­ates to run in 12 of 13 tar­geted GOP seats, only miss­ing out in North Car­o­lina. They even landed a re­spec­ted lieu­ten­ant gov­ernor to run against en­trenched Sen. Chuck Grass­ley in Iowa. If there’s a wave elec­tion, Demo­crats won’t just barely take back con­trol of the Sen­ate, but could come close to double-di­git gains.

The Mis­souri race between GOP Sen. Roy Blunt and Demo­crat­ic Sec­ret­ary of State Jason Kander, an Afgh­anistan war vet­er­an, will be a key bell­weth­er to see if Trump has neg­at­ive coat­tails. In the­ory, Trump would be a de­cent fit in red-state Mis­souri, with its high-con­cen­tra­tion of work­ing-class and rur­al voters. But Blunt is keep­ing his dis­tance from the pres­id­en­tial race, ap­par­ently fear­ing that any boost he might get from Trump’s turnout would be more than off­set by dis­en­chanted St. Louis sub­urb­an­ites and angry Afric­an-Amer­ic­an voters in the cit­ies.

In the House, Demo­crats would need to net 30 seats to win back a ma­jor­ity, but in a wave elec­tion, un­der­dogs of­ten pre­vail. The Cook Polit­ic­al Re­port rates 31 GOP-held seats as com­pet­it­ive (either as toss-ups or lean Re­pub­lic­an). Of those 31 dis­tricts, 23 are based in urb­an or sub­urb­an areas where Trump’s brand of pop­u­lism is un­likely to be a selling point.  

There are two main ar­gu­ments that Re­pub­lic­ans are re­ly­ing on to per­suade them­selves that Trump’s nom­in­a­tion wouldn’t be cata­stroph­ic. One is that even pres­id­en­tial can­did­ates who lose in land­slides don’t usu­ally bring their party down with them. Demo­crats picked up Sen­ate seats in George McGov­ern’s and Wal­ter Mondale’s em­bar­rass­ing elec­tions. And Re­pub­lic­ans only lost one Sen­ate seat in Barry Gold­wa­ter’s epic 1964 de­feat. But the party of all three los­ing can­did­ates suffered sig­ni­fic­ant House losses, and it’s hard to see in today’s po­lar­ized polit­ic­al en­vir­on­ment how Trump’s di­vis­ive can­did­acy wouldn’t ripple down-bal­lot.

Second, some GOP strategists be­lieve that Trump’s abil­ity to at­tract new voters could give a pop­u­list boost to es­tab­lished sen­at­ors. In Ohio, as the the­ory goes, the es­tab­lish­ment-friendly Port­man has already locked down col­lege-edu­cated Re­pub­lic­ans and could be­ne­fit from Trump’s re­ori­ent­ing of blue-col­lar voters in the GOP’s corner. But this the­ory ig­nores Trump’s dam­age to the GOP brand, which could make col­lege-edu­cated swing voters less com­fort­able vot­ing for Port­man or any Re­pub­lic­an.  

The real­ity is that Trump’s nom­in­a­tion has the po­ten­tial to re­verse the gains that Re­pub­lic­ans have spent the past six years build­ing up—with Pres­id­ent Obama out of the pic­ture after 2016. You’d think that party lead­ers would be rais­ing holy hell to pro­tect their hard-earned gains. In­stead, they’re whist­ling past the grave­yard.