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Over the past few days (okay, really over the past eight-plus months he's been running for president), Trump has said and done things that would have absolutely destroyed any other politician.
Two of the most recent examples: On Tuesday, his campaign manager was charged with battery for allegedly pulling away that reporter from Trump, and video was released of the altercation that Trump denied even existed.
And on Wednesday, Trump went there in the abortion debate when he said "there has to be some sort of punishment" for women who have abortions that have been banned -- something even the most conservative Republican officeholders won't touch with a 10-foot poll. (Trump later backed off this assertion.)
Conventional wisdom that Trump wouldn't survive these mini-scandals has done a 180. Conventional wisdom is now that these mini-scandals almost definitely won't bring Trump down -- at least in the GOP primary. Indeed, you could make the case that Trump has only gotten more popular among conservatives as he's plowed through the Republican primary without appearing to giving much heed to the political impact of his words. In doing so, Trump has almost single-handedly upended the party he says he represents. We're to the point now where it's not clear how Republicans are going to come out of this intact.
The clearest example of the fractured Republican Party and Trump's role in putting a hammer to it is a piece of paper.
Before any votes were cast, the Republican candidates had all publicly promised they would support the eventual Republican nominee. Trump even held a news conference at Trump Tower this fall and literally signed an official-looking (but definitely not legally binding) pledge.
That promise has crumbled amid the chaos of this week. At a CNN town hall on Tuesday, all three remaining candidates either suggested or said outright they wouldn't honor that pledge, especially if a certain somebody wins (or in Trump's cases, loses).
WASHINGTON POST
Now, let's crunch the numbers on the race. Trump needs 1,237 delegates in order to clinch the nomination on a first ballot at the Republican convention. As of now, Trump has 752 delegates and Cruz has 463. This means that Trump still needs to win more than half of the delegates to be allocated in future contests. According to Fivethirtyeight's delegate targets which estimate the number of delegates each candidate needs to win in each contest to be on track to win the nomination, Trump is at 95%, or just 5% short of a first ballot victory.
The next primary is the April 5 Wisconsin primary. Here's how Fivethirtyeight views the polling so far in Wisconsin. It's not good for Trump:
Two polls out in the past week, from Basswood Research and Marquette University, show Ted Cruz with a lead of 5 percentage points and 10 percentage points, respectively. If Cruz wins Wisconsin by that much, Trump could get few of the state’s delegates, setting him further off pace and increasing the chances of a contested convention.
--- But let’s spin this forward further: If Trump loses Wisconsin, is that merely a bump in the road or a sign of things to come? It’s easy to make too much of one contest. For instance, Wisconsin is unique in that local talk radio has been united against Trump. National talk show hosts, in contrast,are split on Trump.
Another big difference: Republicans in Wisconsin have a lot to be happy about, while Trump has drawn much of his support from voters disaffected with the GOP. Republicans run state government and Gov. Scott Walker and U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan, who is from Wisconsin, both have favorable ratings above 75 percent among the state’s Republicans.
But Trump’s problems in Wisconsin might be a sign of more serious issues for his campaign. It’s the first primary in which the vast majority of the votes will have been cast after Marco Rubio’s departure from the race,3 and Trump has picked up 0 percentage points since the February Marquette poll. Cruz picked up 21 percentage points, and Kasich rose by 13 percentage points. While earning 30 percent to 40 percent of the vote was enough for Trump to win a number of states in a candidate field of more than three, the coalescing of anti-Trump support for Cruz and Kasich means it may not be enough in other states down the line.
The other troubling result for Trump [and Cruz] is that Kasich really does seem to have an appeal with a certain type of self-described moderate Republican that Cruz doesn’t.... This type of well-educated moderate voter can be found by the barrel in thenorthern mid-Atlantic and southern New England states that vote in late April. Cruz will likely be uncompetitive in many congressional districts in states like Connecticut and New York, but the results coming out of Wisconsin suggest that Kasich may do well there. That wouldn’t help Cruz get any closer to 1,237, but it could keep Trump further away.The new Wisconsin polling is a very good sign for the NeverTrumpites. The 20 percent of the vote that Marco Rubio had in the state in February has essentially been handed over to Ted Cruz. [ Rubio, trying to force a contested convention in order to stop Trump, sent letters to Republican officials in the states where he won a combined 171 delegates saying that he wants to hold onto them through the first ballot.] ...This is a state, in other words, where the consolidate-against-Trump theory appears to perhaps be working.
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But On The Other Hand....
JOHN CASSIDY, NEW YORKER
Trump’s core supporters aren’t backing him for his knowledge of the relative merits of land-based, sea-based, and air-based nuclear missiles [The Nuclear Triad]. They like his nativism, his derisive attitude toward President Obama, his attacks on the media, his populist tirades about trade treaties destroying American jobs, and the fact that he isn’t a professional politician. Critical commentaries by journalists and interventions by Mitt Romney aren’t going to make much impression on Trump’s backers, some of whom may even condone the candidate’s misogynistic attacks on women like Carly Fiorina, and Megyn Kelly.
The question is, and has been, how large a segment of the Republican electorate the Trump faithful constitute. Most analysts reckon that it’s about a third. That means Trump, to get the twelve hundred and thirty-seven delegates he needs for a majority, also has to draw in some Republicans who like some of what he says and stands for, but not all of it. In states like Arizona, Florida, and Mississippi, he has managed to do this, receiving nearly half the vote. But in other states, such as Illinois and Kentucky, he has been held to the mid-thirties.
A couple of notes of caution are in order, though [on the Wisconsin polling results above.]. The Marquette poll, which received a huge amount of attention, had a small sample size and a large margin of error. Another new poll, from Public Policy Polling, shows Cruz just one point ahead of Trump.
Even if he does badly in Wisconsin, it won’t necessarily imply that he can’t get to twelve hundred and thirty-seven, or that a contested convention is inevitable. After Tuesday, the race moves to the Northeastern Corridor, where Trump will be hoping to rack up some big wins. In New York, for example, where ninety-five delegates will be up for grabs, on April 19th, a new survey from Quinnipiac University shows him leading Cruz by a huge margin, thirty-six percentage points, with Kasich even further behind. In Connecticut, Maryland, and Pennsylvania, which vote the following week, not much polling has been done recently. But the evidence that exists suggests that Trump is ahead.
In other words, he is still in a strong strategic position and remains the firm favorite, even as cracks are showing. Predictwise, a Web site that combines data from polls and betting markets, estimates that the probability of him getting the nomination is sixty-six per cent. But it’s worth noting that that number has dropped over the past week or so, from eighty per cent.
Since the Never Trump movement formed, its strategy has been to narrow the Republican field, unite the anti-Trump forces, and keep up the pressure on Trump to see if he self-destructs. It would be an exaggeration to say that this has already happened, but his enemies have reasons to be encouraged.
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So What Happens if Trump Loses at the Convention?
GREG SARGENT, WASHINGTON POST
As we noted Wednesday morning, most of the times that a candidate has gone into a convention with a plurality of delegates but not a majority, he was not named his party's nominee. If Trump doesn't hit 1,237 delegates, he'll have to put up a remarkable fight against the Republican establishment on the convention floor, a bit like fighting a monster from inside the monster's den.
The crucial point here is not that this necessarily means Trump will run a third-party candidacy....He may try to do that, but such an effort might depend on ballot logistics. Rather, what really matters here is that Trump is signaling his possible intention to do maximum damage to the party if he is denied the nomination, through whatever means he has at his disposal.
We simply don’t have any idea yet how much damage Trump can do to the Republican Party. It could go well beyond denying Republicans the White House. If a raging Trump, having lost the nomination at a contested convention, urges millions of his followers not to vote Republican, it could cause large numbers of GOP voters to sit out the election, potentially rupturing their plans for holding their Senate majority.
Even if Trump wins the nomination with a minimum of convention drama, that, too, could do a lot of damage. If a lot of GOP voters alienated by Trump back the Democratic nominee or sit the election out, that could imperil GOP control of the Senate. It’s possible this could also begin to produce cracks in the GOP’s House majority. Paul Kane reports that political observers are suggesting it now looks possible that a Trump nomination could lead to major gains for Democrats in the House. Winning the 30 seats needed to take back the majority still looks like a major long shot. But some analysts think “double digit gains” for Dems are possible.
If Republicans do lose the Senate, a much smaller House majority could matter a lot in determining whether the House can continue to function for Republicans as a kind of ideological island fortress, seemingly impregnable to the pressures of demographic and cultural change and evolving national public opinion.
This is why some Republicans may move to push a third-party challenger if Trump does win the nomination — to give Republicans a reason to go to the polls and vote for Senate and Congressional incumbents. But even in this scenario, they’d effectively be sacrificing the White House in order to do as much as possible to salvage their Senate (and House!!!) majority.
To be sure, it’s possible that Cruz could win the nomination at a contested convention and that Trump could support him. While this would also likely cost Republicans the White House, it could avert the most damaging down-ticket scenarios. But it’s also possible that we’ve only just begun to glimpse the damage Trump can do to the GOP.