Weary Republican leaders are accepting Donald Trump’s latest staff shake-up, hopeful that a new leadership team can reverse the New York businessman’s struggles even as some worry it’s too little too late.
The Republican National Committee has already conceded it may divert resources away from the presidential contest favor of vulnerable Senate and House candidates if Trump’s standing does not improve in the coming weeks. RNC chief strategist Sean Spicer called Trump’s staffing changes the “healthy growth of the campaign at a senior level at a key point.”
Spicer also urged caution as Trump’s new team contemplates whether the fiery populism and freewheeling style that won him the Republican nomination will give him a better shot at the White House than uniting his party and rallying moderate voters.
“I think people want him to be authentic,” Spicer said. “They appreciate he’s not a scripted politician, but there’s a recognition that words do matter.”
Trump on Wednesday announced a staff overhaul at his campaign’s highest levels, the second shake-up in the past two months. The Republican nominee tapped Stephen Bannon — a combative conservative media executive with no presidential campaign experience — to serve as CEO of his White House bid.
Pollster Kellyanne Conway, who has known Trump for years and gained his trust during her brief tenure working for him, will serve as campaign manager.
The moves are aimed in part at marginalizing campaign chairman Paul Manafort, a longtime Republican operative who pushed Trump to moderate his tone and improve relations with skeptical Republican officials. In breaking with that approach, Trump appears set on finishing the race on his own terms — win or lose.
Trump’s divisive tone and weak poll numbers have triggered a rash of Republican defections in recent weeks. Party loyalists have grown increasingly frustrated with Trump’s inability to stay focused on Democrat Hillary Clinton amid a series of self-created distractions.
“I don’t care if Donald Duck is running the campaign,” said Henry Barbour, a Republican National committeeman from Mississippi. “If he can make this thing about Hillary Clinton’s record and getting the country back on track, that’s what’s going to win this election.”
While Manafort retains his title, Trump allies made clear Bannon will be overseeing the campaign staff and operations.
Rarely do presidential campaigns undergo such a level of tumult at such a stage of the general election. Wednesday’s announcements came less than three months before Election Day, and roughly six weeks before early voting begins.
Conway downplayed the notion of internal dissent at campaign headquarters at Trump Tower, telling The Associated Press the staffing changes are “an expansion at a critical time in the homestretch.”
Trump’s standing in the White House race plummeted throughout the summer and he now trails Clinton in preference polls of most key battleground states. He’s struggled to offer voters a consistent message, overshadowing formal policy speeches with a steady stream of controversies, including a public feud with an American Muslim family whose son was killed while serving in the U.S. military in Iraq.
Clinton, campaigning Wednesday in Cleveland, said voters should not be fooled by any Trump efforts to revamp his candidacy.
“There is no new Donald Trump,” Clinton said. “This is it.”
Bannon’s website has been fiercely loyal to Trump for months and sharply critical of Republican leaders, including House Speaker Paul Ryan. Breitbart has also actively promoted false conspiracy theories about Clinton, and some have then made their way into Trump’s remarks.
Manafort has spent months trying to ingratiate Trump to Republican lawmakers who have urged the billionaire businessman to dial back his fiery rhetoric and run a more traditional campaign. While Trump held a handful of meetings with Washington Republicans and fulfilled requests from GOP leaders to raise campaign cash, he’s continued to rankle lawmakers with his numerous controversies.
“Trump is on his third campaign manager in three months. If this was a hot dog stand, conclusion might be there was a problem with the dogs,” Republican strategist Stuart Stevens, a frequent Trump critic, wrote on Twitter.
(AP)
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8 Responses
All the king’s horses and all the king’s men…
It was clear that he was the “Biggest Loser”….Huuuuuge Looooser, if he continued to campaign based on his policy views and vision for the country. You could see some of his groupies getting up and leaving his rallies when he read from a teleprompter. They come to his rallies in the same way they come to be entertained at a professional wrestling match. They want his brash, vulgar, ad homonym personal attacks, dark conspiracy theories prefaced by “people are saying that XXXX….” along the lines of a National Enquirer cover headline. In simple terms, he was dying and his now surrounded by like-minded right wing, racist nutcases. The best line was from a Fox News talking head who called it “hospice care” for the Trump campaign.
A “homonym” is a word that has the same pronunciation but different spelling and meaning of another word, e.g., vice (immoral acts) and vise (a device for holding wood or metal so that a metal worker or carpenter can work on the thing held in the vise). “ad hominem” is a Latin phrase imported into English that means, as used in English, a personal attack on a person’s character or behavior that is irrelevant to the main criticism of the person. (In Latin, the words mean “to the man”.)
Hey#2, Mr. Gadolhatorah fella, do you then prefer Bill’s Hill?
It boils down to this, a liar vs a meshugana; a liar doesn’t lie all the time, but a meshugana is always meshuga. A liar can stop that behavior, but a meshugana will always be meshuga.
#5 It boils down to one who kills all who might tell the truth about her and about her mental health and who has ties with Islamic people and armed and funded ISIS and is a big anti-Semite vs one who has no fear of saying the truth.
Tipesh Hador# 1, you should be banned from YWN for stupidity alone. I suspect however you have a vested interestest in H winning just like SOROS . U are also SOROS for am yisroel!
#4
Definitely prefer Bill’s Hill to this clown…sad that we have two such bad choices but that’s not my call. I live in the real world and have to think about who each candidate will surround themselves with. On that basis alone, its not even a close call. I’d vote for Gary Johnson/Bill Weld if they had a reasonable chance. Each day that goes by you realize how its not even a close call.