It’s been exactly a year since Donald Trump rode the escalator down to the lobby of Trump Tower to announce for president. We now see the spectacle of Trump holding the entire Republican party hostage and much of the party leadership struck with a form of Stockholm syndrome. That’s defined as a situation where hostages identify with and defend their captor — in this case, Trump.
Such hostage situations rarely end well. Ask Chris Christie, who insisted in March, after a news conference in which he stood stony-faced behind Trump, “For those who are concerned: I wasn’t being held hostage.” This week, Christie refuted allegations he had been turned into Trump’s “man servant,” sent out to fetch MacDonald’s meals for him.
Some haven’t been roped in. Ohio governor John Kasich told Yahoo News that without Trump’s having a “Damascus Road” experience, he “won’t be involved” in supporting him. “In either political party, there’s always a tug between party loyalty, being part of the team, and your conscience, “Kasich said. “And there’s lot of people who are really torn. . . . I’ve learned over the course of my career that I have to live with myself and with my family.”
There are practical reasons to believe that Trump is in danger of dragging the Republican party down to a historic defeat. The latest ABC News poll shows his negative rating hitting 70 percent with voters, higher than even the 55 percent negative score notched by Hillary Clinton. Even on terrorism, a CBS poll yesterday found that only a quarter of voters approved of Trump’s shambolic response to the Orlando massacre. The favorable response to Clinton on terrorism wasn’t great, either; but at 36 percent, it eclipses Trump’s numbers. In the same poll, Hillary took a six-point lead. Trump’s staffing and fundraising operations are still skeletal, and Ed Rollins, the co-chairman of a super PAC backing Trump, admitted last week that the boastful billionaire in reality doesn’t have the resources to fund his campaign.
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