This article is from the source 'nytimes' and was first published or seen on . It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.

You can find the current article at its original source at http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/13/us/politics/gop-reaction-donald-trump.html

The article has changed 3 times. There is an RSS feed of changes available.

Version 0 Version 1
Some in G.O.P. Who Deserted Donald Trump Over Video Are Returning Some in G.O.P. Who Deserted Donald Trump Over Lewd Tape Are Returning
(about 5 hours later)
Republicans were fleeing Donald J. Trump after a video of him demeaning women was made public last Friday, but less than a week later some are already starting to come back to the Republican presidential nominee. WASHINGTON — Stung by a fierce backlash from Donald J. Trump’s ardent supporters, four Republican members of Congress who had made headlines for demanding that Mr. Trump leave the presidential race retreated quietly this week, conceding that they would still probably vote for the man they had excoriated just days before.
Senator Deb Fischer, a Republican from Nebraska who said on Saturday that Mr. Trump’s remarks were “disgusting” and that he should drop out of the race, said on Tuesday that she still planned to vote for Mr. Trump. From Senator John Thune of South Dakota, the only member of the Republican leadership in either chamber who had disavowed Mr. Trump, to Representative Scott Garrett of New Jersey, who is in a difficult re-election fight, the lawmakers contorted themselves over Mr. Trump. Some of them would not mention him by name, preferring instead to affirm their support for the generic “Republican ticket,” still grasping for a middle ground.
“Like most Nebraskans, I am fully committed to defeating Hillary Clinton,” Ms. Fischer told a Nebraska radio station. “I support the Republican ticket. and I plan to vote for Mr. Trump and Mr. Pence on November 8th.” They said that if Mr. Trump would not make way for his running mate, Gov. Mike Pence of Indiana, to lead the party after the release of a recording on Friday showing Mr. Trump bragging about groping women, they had little choice but to vote for their embattled nominee. But the collective about-face owed less to his refusal to exit a race in which ballots are already being cast than to the fury his supporters unleashed at the defectors at rallies and on social media.
Ms. Fischer reiterated that she found Mr. Trump’s remarks unacceptable, but added, “I never said that I wasn’t voting for our Republican ticket.” And Mr. Trump himself escalated his bitter feud with the country’s highest-ranking elected Republican, Speaker Paul D. Ryan, saying at a rally in Florida on Wednesday that Mr. Ryan’s refusal to actively support his candidacy was part of a “sinister deal going on.”
Mr. Trump has been raging against Republicans who revoked their endorsements of him this week, warning in a series of tirades on Twitter that their lack of loyalty would cost them at the polls on Election Day. He has been most hostile toward Speaker Paul D. Ryan, who said that he would not campaign with Mr. Trump and instead would focus his attention on congressional races. The quick reversals back to Mr. Trump’s camp vividly illustrated Republicans’ predicament as they grapple with a nominee whom some of their core supporters adore, a Democratic candidate their base loathes — and a host of voters who believe that Mr. Trump is self-evidently unsuited for high office.
Ms. Fischer was not the only Republican who reversed her endorsement of Mr. Trump this week. In Alabama, Representative Bradley Byrne, who said flatly over the weekend, “It is now clear Donald Trump is not fit to be president of the United States,” insisted to reporters on Wednesday that he had always said he would “be a supporter of the Republican ticket from top to bottom.”
Darryl Glenn, a Republican candidate for the United States Senate representing Colorado, faced a fierce backlash from supporters of Mr. Trump after he said that a person who speaks about women like Mr. Trump did “should not be the face of our country to the Free World.” “I’m a Republican,” Mr. Byrne said. “I don’t vote Democrat.”
But in an interview with Fox News, Mr. Glenn, who is facing an uphill battle to unseat Senator Michael Bennet, said that Mr. Trump’s apology and debate performance changed his mind. Mr. Thune, who also said on Saturday that Mr. Pence should be the party’s nominee, “effective immediately,” acknowledged that the recording of Mr. Trump boasting of grabbing women’s genitals was “more offensive than anything that I had seen” from the often-inflammatory Republican standard-bearer. But he said in an interview Tuesday with KELO television in Sioux Falls, S.D., that he would still cast his ballot for Mr. Trump.
“Donald Trump did what he absolutely had to do,” Mr. Glenn said. “ I think he reset his campaign.” “I intend to support the nominee of our party, and if anything should change, then I’ll let you know,” Mr. Thune said. “But he’s got a lot of work to do, I think, if he’s going to have any hope of winning this election.”
Other Republicans who denounced Mr. Trump have also said this week they planned to vote for him. Of the Republicans who reversed themselves, only Mr. Garrett is facing a competitive race next month. Mr. Byrne and Mr. Thune are expected to easily defeat their Democratic opponents, and Senator Deb Fischer of Nebraska is not up for re-election until 2018.
Senator John Thune of South Dakota, one of the most prominent Republicans to disavow Mr. Trump, said that he would still back the ticket. On Saturday, Ms. Fischer called Mr. Trump’s comments “disgusting and totally unacceptable under any circumstance” and said, “It would be wise for him to step aside and allow Mike Pence to serve as our party’s nominee.”
“I intend to support the nominee of our party and if anything should change then I’ll let you know, but he’s got a lot of work to do I think if he’s going to have any hope of winning this election,” Mr. Thune told KELO-TV, in Sioux Falls, S.D., on Tuesday. But she was almost philosophical in explaining to a Nebraska radio station on Tuesday why she was still backing Mr. Trump.
Representative Scott Garrett of New Jersey, who is facing re-election next month, said last weekend that Mr. Trump should step aside, but his campaign clarified that he would vote for him anyway. “He decided he would not step aside. I respect his decision,” she said. “I support the Republican ticket, and it’s a Trump-Pence ticket.”
“He has always believed that Hillary Clinton is not the candidate whose leadership and policies are right for America,” Sarah Neibart, Mr. Garrett’s campaign manager, said. “Donald Trump remains the nominee of the Republican Party, and Representative Garrett has always said he will vote for the Republican Party nominee.” In New Jersey, Mr. Garrett also initially called for Mr. Pence to lead the party. But by Tuesday, Mr. Garrett, a seven-term lawmaker who was already facing perhaps the stiffest challenge of his career, said he would “vote Trump for president if he is the party’s official nominee come Election Day.”
That same calculus applied for Representative Bradley Byrne of Alabama. He had issued a statement declaring that Gov. Mike Pence should take over as the Republican nominee after hearing Mr. Trump’s vulgar remarks. But with Mr. Trump refusing to quit, Mr. Byrne still plans to vote for him. The legislators’ tortuous efforts to climb down from their earlier clarion calls did not seem to placate Mr. Trump’s admirers much.
“He will support the Republican ticket on Election Day, as he has pledged to do all along,” said Seth Morrow, Mr. Byrne’s spokesman. “He just believes that person should be Mike Pence.” “If you are not FOR Mr. Trump, then you must be AGAINST Mr. Trump,” Lonnie Lee Mixon II, an Alabamian, wrote on Mr. Byrne’s Facebook page. “Please stop dancing around this.”
The Trump campaign continued on Wednesday to pressure Republicans to fall in line behind Mr. Trump despite his recent stumbles. Kellyanne Conway, Mr. Trump’s campaign manager, said on ABC’s “Good Morning America” that dithering by Republicans was not helping the cause of defeating Hillary Clinton. A handful of the Republican Party’s recruits also find themselves in a vise. In Nebraska, Don Bacon, who is challenging Representative Brad Ashford, a Democrat, initially issued a statement calling Mr. Trump’s remarks “utterly disgraceful and disqualifying.” But the news release is nowhere to be found on Mr. Bacon’s website, and at a debate Tuesday night in Omaha, he would not rule out voting for Mr. Trump.
“Well, we want the support of anybody who’s going to publicly endorse us,” Ms. Conway said. “But enough of the pussyfooting around in terms of, you know, do you support us or do you not support us?” And after Scott Jones, the Republican challenging Representative Ami Bera in California, posted on his Facebook page that he could no longer explain to his daughters that he was voting for Mr. Trump and would not support either major-party nominee, he was so overwhelmed with anger from Trump supporters that the post was deleted. (Mr. Jones’s campaign noted that the full statement was still on his Twitter feed.)
And Mr. Trump made clear that he was still seething over Mr. Ryan The specter of a civil war enveloping the party less than four weeks before Election Day left veteran Republicans deeply worried about what the elected officials who moved so quickly to abandon Mr. Trump last weekend had wrought.
“Wouldn’t you think Paul Ryan would call and say ‘good going?’” Mr. Trump, referring to his debate performance, asked at a rally in Florida on Wednesday. “There’s a whole deal going on there, and we’re going to figure it out.” One former Virginia congressman, Thomas M. Davis III, said “panicked” Republicans might have made the party’s Trump-related problems even worse.
“It discourages turnout,” Mr. Davis said, noting that even as Mr. Trump sinks in the polls, he still has at least two-thirds of the party behind him. “Publicly disowning and running from him just creates havoc. It hurts everybody. I understand individual decisions, but when this happens institutionally, it hurts.”
Sensing an opportunity to rally his supporters against the wavering Republican leaders, Mr. Trump went after Mr. Ryan at a campaign rally for the first time since the speaker told House Republicans on Monday that he would no longer defend the party’s nominee. In a speech before 7,000 supporters in Ocala, Fla., Mr. Trump veered between dark, conspiratorial warnings and strikingly personal expressions of resentment.
“There’s a whole deal going on,” he said of Mr. Ryan’s decision to walk away from his candidacy. “We’re going to figure it out.” Yet even as he used the rally to accuse the speaker of being part of a nefarious, if vague, plot, Mr. Trump also made clear he was wounded that Mr. Ryan had not called to praise him for his debate performance on Sunday.
“So wouldn’t you think that Paul Ryan would call and say good going, in front of just about the largest audience for a second-night debate in the history of the country?” he complained.
While Mr. Trump had already lashed out at Mr. Ryan on Twitter and in a Fox News interview, his decision to use his own campaign event to hurl attacks at the speaker caused a new wave of fear among Republicans that their now “unshackled” candidate, as he described himself earlier in the week, might use his rallies to similarly attack local Republican lawmakers who have refused to support his candidacy. (They also had to deal with new revelations about Mr. Trump’s behavior, like a report that he had walked into a Miss Teen USA dressing room as contestants were changing, and another report that two women had accused him of groping them.)
Mr. Trump’s campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, would not say whether Mr. Trump planned to start tailoring his intraparty attacks by region. But she pointedly emailed a new automated survey of Nevada voters showing that Republicans were punishing Representative Joe Heck in his Senate campaign for withdrawing his support of Mr. Trump.
One of Mr. Trump’s most prominent remaining allies, the former House speaker Newt Gingrich, said the nominee’s blasts at other Republicans were an unnecessary diversion from targeting Hillary Clinton. But Mr. Gingrich added that Mr. Ryan had invited the opprobrium from both Mr. Trump and his admirers.
“Ryan wants to find a middle path, but he doesn’t understand that the middle path signals to his own partisans that he’s not hanging tough,” he said. “All you have to say if you’re Ryan is, ‘We need to beat Hillary Clinton, and I’m going to help beat Hillary Clinton.’”
Mrs. Clinton herself was reveling in the Republican conflagration and, in a new sign of confidence, used a rally in Pueblo, Colo., to make an appeal across state lines to voters in two red states that now appear within reach.
”If you’ve got friends in Utah or Arizona, make sure they vote, too,” she said. “We are competing everywhere.”