Swing-state Republicans dump on Trump

In front of the largest televised debate audience ever, Donald Trump blew it.

Swing-state Republicans expressed frustration at his Monday night performance, characterizing it as a series of missed opportunities to move the dial in the places that will matter most to his electoral fortunes in November.


Name-checking battleground states like Michigan and Ohio was a wise move, state and local GOP leaders said. And Trump’s message on trade resonates in industrial areas across the Rust Belt, from Pennsylvania to Wisconsin. But above all else, Republican officials and operatives lamented his lack of preparation and failure to reach persuadable voters, especially women and GOP-leaners who are not yet sold on him.

Instead of prosecuting the case against Hillary Clinton — which would have helped accelerate the consolidation of the GOP base in states like Pennsylvania where once-reticent Republicans are beginning to fall in line behind the nominee — Trump got bogged down defending controversial decisions he’s made, from championing birtherism to making insensitive comments about women.

“I think Trump should have been better prepared,” said Alan Novak, a former Pennsylvania Republican Party chairman. “Her preparation, strategically, helped her control the flow of that debate. It was like a basketball game when the pace is dictated by one team. She clearly did that. His focus was on himself, explaining too much about him. The opportunity was missed to go after vulnerable points on her.”

“He started out having a little bit of a better [performance] than what I was anticipating, on trade issues I believe he had her back on her heels in the very first part,” said a veteran North Carolina Republican strategist, working on several races in the state. “There were a lot of opportunities, when they got into discussing cybersecurity, to inject emails, the whole narrative of her carelessness, national security matters and all that. It was a missed opportunity by Trump that comes from a lack of being prepared.”

In interviews with more than a dozen battleground state Republican leaders, there was widespread agreement that Trump’s core supporters would continue to stand by him, and that the election would remain close in their states — they characterized the debate as a failure to accomplish what he needed to, rather than a costly debacle.

“Trump had the opportunity to raise questions about her emails, to raise questions about the Clinton Foundation, to raise questions about Benghazi, to raise questions about a host of other things, and he simply failed to do it,” said Charlie Gerow, a GOP strategist based in Pennsylvania.

While Trump surrogates criticized moderator Lester Holt after the debate, “The burden was on him to do that,” said Gerow of Trump.

The GOP nominee started the debate off strong, many Republicans agreed, initially pushing a message of change and a successful attack on trade policy. But he was repeatedly drawn into protracted fights that didn’t advance his interests, and his lack of policy command was apparent.

Trump’s approach to national security and foreign policy was a particular sticking point with Bill Urbanski, a former GOP chair of northeastern Pennsylvania’s Luzerne County, who said he was bothered by Trump’s seemingly contradictory response to a question about whether the U.S. should embrace a no-first-use nuclear weapons policy.

“Trump was just nowhere near actually being responsive to the question that was posed,” he said. “I guess it could mean two things: one could be…trying to dodge the question because he was trying to make a particular point, but the way I read that was, he didn’t have an answer to that question.”

The end result: Republican-leaners like Urbanski still see no reason to rally to him, raising questions about whether Trump will be able to hit the level of party support achieved by Mitt Romney in Pennsylvania in 2012.

“Man, it continues to trouble me,” said Urbanski, who said he would like to back Trump and can’t stomach voting for Clinton. “This guy is not qualified for this job. He presents himself that way every time I see him. I can’t get over that hurdle.”

Added Gerow, “My sense is, no minds were changed last night among those who had cemented their views…but among the 8, 10, 12, 15 percent who are still genuinely persuadable, I think last night slowed down, if not halted, Trump’s momentum. That’s, I think, the problem. He’s got to try to regain momentum. He has to get back on offense.”

While there are still two debates to go, there won’t be many better chances to win over undecided voters, convince fence-sitting Republicans or energize the base. In Ohio’s Warren County, party regulars were primed for the first showdown between Clinton and Trump, hoping to see him stick it to Clinton at a local GOP watch party.

“We had folks from the statewide and national party, we had local party folks and then we had Trump campaigners, and we had citizens at large,” said Jeff Monroe, the Warren County GOP chairman. “They were totally into it and all jazzed up, more so than I anticipated. The energy level in the room was significantly better than I anticipated.”

But when asked for Trump’s strongest moments in the debate, Monroe explained his impression this way.

“It’s more along the lines that there wasn’t anything catastrophic that would change the outcome,” he said.

“I think that what we saw was that he was doing his very best to distinguish himself from both political sets. He was taking that approach,” Monroe said. “I think that’s going to play well with a lot of the folks that are supporting him. Regardless of whether or not, as the pundits have pointed out, there was some slippage later on, he distinguished himself.”

Florida’s Republican National Committeeman, Peter Feaman, similarly said he couldn’t think of a “high or low point” for Trump in the debate. But he said Trump did accomplish one important task: He proved he could appear presidential, addressing a weakness that has dogged him among some Republicans in the swing state with the largest haul of electoral votes.

“It was pretty plain. I don’t think it contained what a lot of the viewers were hoping to see, which were fireworks. That wasn’t the goal at this point,” he said.

Trump certainly didn’t deliver anything to persuade Sandra Kase, who serves on the Kingston municipal council in Luzerne County. A lifelong Republican who says she cannot vote for Clinton, Kase said Trump allowed the Democratic nominee to bait him, raising questions about his judgment and his ability to control his temper with world leaders.

Equally worrisome, the GOP nominee failed to make strides toward winning over women like Kase in a state where Clinton holds a 14-point edge of Trump among likely women voters, according to a new CNN/ORC poll .

“Just his attitude toward women, sexism, everything that comes out of his mouth turns me off. I’m sorry, I can’t say a good thing about him,” she said. “Just the whole atmosphere of the debate, his whole attitude, his reaction — I don’t think he has the temperament. As soon as someone goads him into something, he blasts out what we wants to say and feels that’s OK, and it’s not.”