Weak Republican Incumbents Stick With Trump Even As He Drags Them Down

Vulnerable Senate Republicans Refuse To Hold Trump Accountable

According to a new Washington Post report, Republicans are “raising alarms” that President Trump’s failed responses to the coronavirus pandemic and protests against racial injustice are hurting their electoral prospects in November. This is just the latest in a series of reports on how Senate Republicans are privately fretting about their own elections — but don’t expect Senate Republicans to stand up and hold Trump accountable. 

Another recent report noted that Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told his caucus that “they couldn’t abandon Trump” as GOP incumbents yesterday refused to condemn Trump’s peddling of a baseless conspiracy theory about a 75-year-old peaceful protestor who was shoved to the ground by police. And after a leaked memo in April showed the National Republican Senatorial Committee advised their candidates not to defend Trump’s pandemic response, the NRSC was quick to show the “fealty” the president demands by asserting “there is no daylight” between Senate Republicans and the White House.

Washington Post: Republicans fear Trump’s weakened standing jeopardizes the party in November

By Robert Costa and Philip Rucker

Key Points:

• President Trump’s incendiary responses to racial injustice protests and the coronavirus pandemic have left him politically isolated and profoundly weakened less than five months from the election, raising alarms among many Republicans about the party’s prospects in November.

• A raft of fresh polling nationally and in battleground states shows Trump losing ground to presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden, a precipitous slide that has triggered deep distress within the GOP about the incumbent’s judgment and instincts, as well as fears that voters could sweep the party out of power completely on Election Day.

• Meanwhile, few Trump allies have been willing to embrace some of the president’s more extreme views, such as his baseless suggestion on Tuesday that a 75-year-old man seen in a viral video last week bleeding from the ear after being shoved by police in Buffalo was a radical provocateur faking his injury.

• But there is no sign yet of a mass exodus from the runaway Trump train. If anything, most elected Republicans see themselves as prisoners onboard, calculating that jumping off would lead to almost certain defeat, according to interviews with more than a dozen party strategists, many of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to talk candidly.

• Conversations at the highest ranks of the party have reached what one veteran operative called the “acceptance phase of grieving,” where “there is an understanding that he’s president until at least November, and there is not much we can do about it.”

• This operative continued: “Look — no one can afford at this point to get on the wrong side of Trump. But you can kind of play it cool and don’t have to comment on everything he does.”

• Haunting the senators and their advisers is the experience of former senators such as Kelly Ayotte, a Republican from New Hampshire who spoke out against Trump’s “Access Hollywood” comments bragging about sexually assault and went on to lose her 2016 reelection race, according to advisers close to several senators.

• Jesse Hunt, a spokesman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said in response to the concerns, “The greatest threat to the GOP Senate majority is hand-wringing consultants who shouldn’t be hired to walk a dog let alone consult on a U.S. Senate race.”

• Trump has trailed Biden by an average of eight percentage points in national polling over the past week and a half, according to an analysis by RealClearPolitics. Recent polls also show Trump losing to Biden in head-to-head matchups in a number of battleground states, including Florida, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

• The officials pointed out that Trump is performing better than some at-risk GOP incumbents, such as McSally, who trails Democrat Mark Kelly by double digits in most surveys, while Trump trails Biden by single digits in Arizona.

• When a reporter asked Gardner on Tuesday about Trump’s tweet about the Buffalo protester seen on video pushed to the ground and then ignored by police, he claimed he had not seen it. The senator said he was busy working on the Great American Outdoors Act, an infrastructure bill.

Read the full story here.

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