The split over the past few days creates the predicate for a GOP internal war until November and beyond. It will pit swing-state Republicans and those who want to save them, like Paul Ryan, against Trump’s hard-core base and the balance of ordinary partisan Republicans who want the party to fight even harder for Trump. The disunity itself will be damaging and dispiriting.
There will be every incentive for Trump to exacerbate rather than try to smooth over, or at least look past, the divide. Hitting back at his party critics energizes his fans, and, if he is headed for a loss in November, it sets up a stabbed-in-the-back narrative after the election. So his party detractors are insiders, quislings and, to believe his campaign manager Kellyanne Conway, sexual harassers.
The period before the first presidential debate, when Trump pulled close to a tie with Hillary Clinton, feels like an eon ago. He had come back with a month of relative discipline beginning in mid-August that now looks like a parenthesis in an otherwise recklessly selfish campaign.
That Trump would become a poisonous wedge issue within the GOP was always a plausible worst-case scenario. Now, it is upon us. Trump supporters in the primaries wanted to “burn it down.” They may well be able to point to the wreckage of the post-November GOP as an indicator of their smashing success.
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