In front-page headlines and television interviews, he is increasingly being compared to Hitler. Jeb Bush called him “unhinged.” Dick Cheney said his proposed ban on Muslim immigrants “goes against everything we stand for and believe in as a country.”

Donald Trump has done it again. In asserting Monday that the U.S. should ban all Muslims from entering the U.S., Trump forayed further into the cynical demagoguery that has kept him atop the polls for months. Once again, he has turned the Republican primary fight upside down. Once again, he is provoking extreme reactions—from supporters and detractors alike.


But this time, both Republicans and Democrats said that the fate of the GOP is at stake.

At the White House, spokesman Josh Earnest said the candidate’s proposed anti-Muslim travel ban was “materially different” from previous remarks, so much so that they would disqualify him to be president. He scolded the GOP field broadly for being "cowed by Trump" and argued that candidates who are reluctant to stand up to him "have no business serving as president of the United States themselves."

At the Pentagon, officials said the type of rhetoric that portrays the war against ISIL as a war against the Muslim faith poses a national security threat.

"Anything that tries to bolster the ISIL narrative that the United States is somehow at war with Islam is contrary to our values and contrary to our national security,’’ said Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook.

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid went further, blaming the Republican Party for harboring the latent xenophobia that Trump's campaign is exploiting. "Donald Trump is standing on a platform of hate that the Republican Party built for him," Reid tweeted. "Racism has long been prevalent in Republican politics. Only difference now is that Trump is saying out loud what other Rs merely suggest."

Trump's latest gambit, far more outlandish than building a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border or any others, has ratcheted up the pressure on GOP officials to find a way to protect their party brand before it becomes irrevocably tarnished by a man who could be their nominee.



They can't snatch away his campaign cash or limit his media exposure; they can't keep him off ballots. The party brass can’t reason with Trump and can't afford to alienate him to the point that he runs as an independent. And they must swallow the reality that many self-identifying Republicans prefer Trump’s nativism and bombast to their more mainstream, inclusive style of conservatism.

“There are a whole lot of people who like that he says what he thinks, even if they don’t totally agree with him,” said Saul Anuzis, the former Michigan GOP chairman. “There’s nothing we can do as a party at this stage of the game. The more they bash him, they’re only emboldening him further.”

Many high level Republicans are leery of falling into Trump’s trap, knowing that the appearance of overreacting or meddling in this unruly primary fight would only enable the current poll leader by further enhancing his anti-establishment credentials.

But it’s hard to shed the appearance that the GOP has become the Party of Trump when its leaders continue to signal a willingness to accept him as the party standard-bearer.

RNC Chairman Reince Priebus and House Speaker Paul Ryan both, for example, criticized Trump’s proposal as “anti-American,” but refused to go further in calling on him to exit the race. And Ryan further affirmed his commitment to support the party’s nominee, even if it’s Trump. Similarly, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, while avoiding using Trump’s name and stopping short of saying he wouldn’t support Trump if he were the nominee, denounced his proposed travel ban as ``completely and totally inconsistent with American values.”

If high-level Republicans are resisting a collective freak-out over Trump, it’s based on a self-soothing belief that the odds of him winning the GOP nomination remain long and that the party’s brand may survive the primary intact as long as the convention produces a more electable nominee.

“If he goes bye-bye, his words will be his words—and then so what?” said Curt Anderson, a GOP strategist who recently guided Bobby Jindal’s presidential bid. “If he wins the nomination, then he will do a lot of damage.”

The RNC, which succeeded in getting Trump and all the other candidates to sign a pledge this summer to support the eventual nominee, is grappling with the suddenly likely prospect of a long, messy delegate fight that could go all the way to the convention—and with the possibility that Trump could win.

“It’s moved from a concern that he’s hung around so long to being concerned that there is this core of non-college-educated segment of the party that’s adhering to his irrational and dangerous rhetoric and has the potential to hold the party back,” said Rob Stutzman, a GOP consultant in Sacramento.

“I think it puts more pressure on people in the party, especially the chairman, to make more declarative statements condemning Trump,” he said. “At some point, we have to have the credibility to demonstrate to the rest of America that this is not the Republican Party. This is what’s so frustrating. This guy’s not a Republican. He’s never done anything for the party. He’s interloped into this process by declaring himself a Republican and is violently tearing apart the party.”

Republican operatives are also seething that Trump's domination of yet another news cycle has conservatives playing defense when they should be on the offensive. "Thanks to Donald Trump, we're spending this week talking about his latest outrageous comment instead of Obama's disastrous Oval Office speech and Hillary's silence on it," said Steven Law, CEO of American Crossroads. "Trump is giving Hillary Clinton invaluable air cover at a time when she is especially vulnerable on her foreign policy record."

Whether Trump secures the nomination, his staying power has Republican officials, operatives and rival campaigns contemplating the very real possibility of next July’s RNC convention arriving with the nomination still up for grabs—and the backroom brawls and floor fights that could ensue in Cleveland.

“I do think there’s going to be a fractured convention if he wins any delegates,” said Katie Packer, a GOP consultant who ran Mitt Romney’s 2012 campaign. “His people are like the Ron Paul people four years ago—they’re only going to be for Trump, and they’ll be willing to disrupt. And I don’t think Ron Paul’s people were nearly as vitriolic and hateful as Trump’s people are.”

Trump is already warning Republicans about him reneging on his pledge to support the GOP nominee should it not be him, posting on Facebook Tuesday afternoon that "68% of my supporters would vote for me if I departed the GOP & ran as an independent."



In the near term, there is a clear divide among Trump’s rivals between those like Jeb Bush and John Kasich, establishment Republicans eager to denounce the frontrunner, and others like Marco Rubio, looking to unite a broad range conservatives, and Ted Cruz, unwilling to criticize Trump too harshly lest he alienate his supporters who may yet get behind his campaign.

“I like Donald Trump,” Cruz said Tuesday after stating that he disagrees with Trump’s proposed ban on Muslims. “I commend Donald Trump for standing up and focusing America’s attention on the need to secure our borders.”

The fifth GOP primary debate, scheduled a week from Tuesday in Las Vegas, provides candidates an opportunity to position themselves in relationship to Trump. For those clinging to hope that the Trump phenomenon may yet fade, it’s yet another moment for a rival, or perhaps several of them, to land a fatal blow. But, establishment Republicans have been waiting for that for a long time; and some believe that Trump’s months of dominance, whatever the final outcome, is not without consequence for the party.

“The more time that passes, and especially if he maintains his lead in the polls and heaven forbid becomes our Party’s presidential nominee, there will be no way to effectively separate Trump’s irresponsible demagoguery from the brand and identity of the GOP as a whole. Donald Trump will become the face of the Republican Party,” said Ryan Call, the former Colorado GOP chairman who made minority outreach a top priority.

“If Donald Trump becomes our Party’s nominee for President, not only will have a devastating effect on down-ticket races for Congress and the state legislature throughout the country in 2016, it will taint the brand, party platform and perception of the GOP among Hispanics, young people, women, and other religious and ethnic minorities for years to come.”

Alex Isenstadt, Edward-Isaac Dovere and Bryan Bender contributed to this report.