In a normal election season, any party loyalist would welcome a campaign shakeup as a sign that a beleaguered candidate was righting the ship.

But Donald Trump’s announcement of two new top campaign hands Wednesday — amid plummeting poll numbers — brought no such response. Instead, it stirred yet another round of private hand-wringing among Republicans in the otherwise sleepy Capitol.


“Rearranging the deck chairs is not an effective strategy. They have to change the course,” one top aide to a conservative House Republican said Wednesday. “Problem is not staff. The problem is with Trump.”

Trump’s allies say the naysayers are misreading the latest personnel strategy from the GOP nominee. The decision to tap pollster Kellyanne Conway as campaign manager and Breitbart News Chairman Stephen Bannon as the campaign’s chief executive was merely an expansion of the existing team, they said.

David Perdue (R-Ga.), a first-term senator whose outsider-businessman profile meshes well with that of Trump, said in an interview Wednesday that bringing Conway and Bannon on board is “indicative of what good campaigns do” to position themselves after a party convention and ahead of November.

“What it’s going to allow them to do is to focus on the real issues, and that’s the failure of Barack Obama as president and the fact that Hillary Clinton is going to double down on his failed policies,” Perdue said.

Still, numerous other senior congressional GOP sources, granted anonymity to speak candidly about the presidential race, were skeptical that the shake-up announced early Wednesday would successfully overcome the deep shortcomings that Trump faces now, three months before Election Day. Others cautioned that it may be too early to tell what the impact will be, especially on battleground Senate races.

Trump is facing deficits in a number of swing states critical for a GOP victory in November — such as Florida, North Carolina and Ohio — and found himself in deficits so deep in Virginia and Colorado that it’s prompted Clinton’s campaign to cancel planned television buys in those states.

Other polling has shown that traditionally red states such as Arizona and Georgia could potentially become competitive in November. One aide noted with concern that Trump was losing white college-educated voters to Clinton, the first Republican presidential nominee to fall behind with that group in decades.

But Perdue said he believes Trump should embrace his own blunt persona, the one that captured millions of GOP primary voters and vanquished 16 other presidential contenders. In particular, the hire of Bannon is “a further demonstration that he is not going to, in the general campaign, move over to the establishment” — and Perdue said that is a good thing.

“As an outsider, I know the establishment encouraged me to change when I became the nominee,” added Perdue, the political newcomer who won a crowded primary and elected to the Senate in 2014. “I don’t think we ought to change Trump. I think Trump is Trump.”

And it was not overlooked among top Republicans on Wednesday that Trump tapped a top executive at Breitbart News, the hard-line outlet that has taken particular pleasure at being a vocal antagonist to the Republican leadership in Washington, as a head honcho on his staff.

“It certainly raises questions about dedication to the team,” one senior Senate GOP aide said.

The aide added: “Obviously, unity has been a challenge. And so I certainly hope this changes and the new direction for the Trump campaign is not one of embracing more Republican-on-Republican violence.”

Trump’s fate this November will ultimately be one key factor in the destiny of vulnerable Senate Republicans, who — according to recent polling — are outrunning their controversial standard-bearer, but with varying levels of success.

In New Hampshire, Republican Sen. Kelly Ayotte was down 10 points against Democratic challenger Maggie Hassan in a WBUR poll that showed Clinton enjoying a 15-point lead against Trump. North Carolina’s Richard Burr has rarely been down in polling against Democrat Deborah Ross, but polling from NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Marist released last week found him down 2 points against Ross, while Clinton was up 9 points against Trump in the state.

Trump has said he could appeal to working-class voters in Pennsylvania, but the recent NBC/WSJ/Marist polling showed he was losing to Clinton by 11 points, helping Democrat Katie McGinty vault to a 4-point lead over GOP Sen. Pat Toomey. Rob Portman of Ohio and Marco Rubio of Florida have shown much more success at outrunning the top of the ticket, but it’s unclear how much of that advantage they’ll hold by Election Day.

With Trump’s standing in polls sliding precipitously, other top GOP aides doubted the campaign shake-up would do much to change course.

“If the underlying thinking with the move is to better enable Donald being Donald, he is toast,” another senior Republican source said.

There were fewer concerns with Conway, the pollster who was previously a strategist for a super PAC backing Ted Cruz. And the anti-abortion movement, a key Republican constituency that had initially expressed reservations about Trump, showered effusive praise on the hires.

“I have known and trusted Kellyanne Conway my entire professional life. No one is better at understanding what real people are thinking and how to connect with them than Kellyanne,” Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony List, said in a statement. “She and [Bannon] both understand the importance of effectively communicating the pro-life position and leveraging the passion of the pro-life grassroots in winning elections.”

The new hires “might help honing his message,” a fourth senior GOP aide said. “Not that it’s a winning message.”