Lakhota
Diamond Member
Donald Trump is tearing apart his party.
Trump is mad at elected officials. Donors are mad at the RNC. And everyone anticipates a bloodbath on Election Day.
After a week of repeated allegations that Donald Trump sexually assaulted women at various stages of his life, top Republican donors and even some rank-and-file lawmakers are urging the party to fully cordon itself off from its presidential nominee.
Trump did himself no favors with this crowd this week: disparaging his accusers’ physical appearance, launching tirades against the press corps, and giving a more full throated endorsement of the notion that the election was rigged against him.
Watching from afar, a number of top Republican donors were aghast. One very high ranking Wall Street donor said that pressure on the RNC to cut ties with Trump “is intense.” As for the RNC’s chairman, Reince Priebus, the donor warned that “his re-elect [as chair] was on the line by holding firm” to Trump.
Trump has put top Republicans in a Hobbesian bind, forced to choose between alienating the vast number of voters devoted to the real estate mogul and the elite wing of the party that finds him repulsive. So far, they have largely sought a middle ground, denouncing the candidate at times while never fully severing their ties. But as the election nears and the limit of Trump’s political abilities and appeal become clearer, walking that line has grown much harder.
One Republican National Committee member told The Huffington Post that he advised congressional candidates to avoid an event featuring Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, out of fear that they’d be hounded by the press over the nominee’s sexual assault allegations. Other party officials have told HuffPost that fundraising for down-ballot races has been hit hard by antipathy to Trump’s presence on the ticket.
Mark DeMoss, a fundraiser for Mitt Romney in 2012, is one of the donors sitting out this cycle. He acknowledged that it was “perhaps” unfair to congressional candidates embroiled in their own specific elections. But his distaste for the top of the ticket determined everything else.
“I’m very distraught about it,” he said. “I just think it’s the most shallow, petty, immature presidential race of my lifetime. I’m 54… I’m not sure how we got here and I’m not sure where we go from here, either.”
DeMoss, the head of a major Christian public relations firm, said he would be more inclined to give to the RNC if it formally broke with Trump. “But I wouldn’t give a dollar to the RNC if it was a joint funding project with the Trump campaign,” he said.
Much More: The Trump-Induced Breakup Of The GOP Has Begun
Go Trump!!!!! You should be on Hillary's payroll. You're even more destructive to the GOP than Sarah Palin.
