For days, Mr. Trump’s top advisers and allies have urged him to move on from the feud, which erupted when Mr. Khan criticized him at the Democratic convention, and focus instead on the economy and the national security record of his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton. Yet, facing outcry on the left and right, Mr. Trump has insisted to associates that he has been treated unfairly by Mr. Khan, the news media and some Republicans, said people familiar with the campaign’s deliberations who insisted on anonymity to discuss them.
Republicans now say Mr. Trump’s obstinacy in addressing perhaps the gravest crisis of his campaign may trigger drastic defections within the party, and Republican lawmakers and strategists have begun to entertain abandoning him en masse…
In Mr. Trump’s five-day confrontation with a military family, Republicans have found the most agonizing test yet of their relationship with a candidate who has flouted political conventions around religion, race, gender and now military service. Republican strategists who once imagined Mr. Trump could be brought under control in a general election all but openly acknowledged this week that that prospect had vanished…
Liesl Hickey, a Republican strategist who led the party’s defense of its majority in the House of Representatives in 2014, said lawmakers should feel liberated to split with Mr. Trump if their survival depended on it.
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