This week has certainly been interesting. Donald Trump’s
comments on the Khan family have generally left people scratching their heads.
We need not explore the merits of Trump’s comments to take note of how many
Republican leaders felt the need to condemn him. In turn, Trump has lashed out and refused to
support John McCain and Paul Ryan in their primaries. This is a gentle reminder of the problem that
Republicans face. Lots of Republican
voters really like Trump; a much smaller number really dislikes Trump. All
Republicans running for office need all of these people to support them. This
was demonstrated when the leadership adopted the strategy of hugging Donald
Trump and praying that it worked out. Now,
they seem to have begun doubting that strategy as this week has played out. But
the problem for them is that because they rely on Trump loyalists for a large
number of their votes, they can’t be
quite super vocal in their denunciations. Trump primary voters were more than
20% of Romney’s 2012 vote. Republicans
need them to make their electoral math work and re-elect their Congress. But they also need distance if Trump is going
to go down by more than Romney did. It can get very ugly very fast. Continued fretting over this ongoing tension
is very much what we will be seeing over the next week or so. Candidates and pundits favorable to the
Republican cause need to get past this quickly or the risk is that everyone on
their side is going to lose.
The Scorecard
The Scorecard is a political strategy and analysis blog. Our hope is to provide information and insight that can be found nowhere else into how and why things are happening in American politics. Unlike many political pundits, we will tell you who we think is going to win as an election approaches; we will tell you why; and we will give you a sense of our level of confidence. Ours is a holistic approach, one that takes in as many numbers as possible but is also willing to look past the numbers if need be. When we turn out to have been wrong, we will let you know. When we are right, we’ll let you know that too.
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About Me
Author Jason Paul is a longtime political operative who got his start as an intern in 2002. He has been a political forecaster for almost as long. He won the 2006 Swing State Project election prediction contest and has won two other local contests. He had the pulse of Obama-Clinton race in 2008 and has been as good as anyone at delegate math in the 2016 race. He looks forwards to providing quality coverage for the remainder of the 2016 race.
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