Donald Trump alienated many Republicans by feuding with family of a war hero and an initial refusal to endorse Paul Ryan – and missed a chance to criticize Clinton

Two weeks after Donald Trump accepted the Republican nomination in Cleveland, political operatives are talking about his campaign as if he has already lost.

Trump’s campaign has careened from controversy to controversy during a terrible week and has alienated many in his own party by pursuing an ongoing feud with the family of a fallen Iraq war hero and his initial outright refusal to endorse Paul Ryan, the highest ranking elected Republican in the United States.

National polls in recent days have seen Trump losing by up to 15 percentage points to Hillary Clinton and he is down by double digits in polls of key swing states like Pennsylvania and New Hampshire.

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Through it all, his bravado has remained intact at rallies from Florida and Virginia to Maine and Wisconsin. Yet while the only interruption in the room came when the candidate managed to pick a fight with a crying baby, the chorus of voices against him in the wider party is growing.

In the past week, party figures, including an outgoing congressman, a major donor and two senior female campaign operatives, have openly said they will vote for Hillary Clinton in November.

Former acting director of the CIA, Michael Morell, also weighed in for Clinton in a New York Times opinion piece on Friday, declaring: “Donald J Trump is not only unqualified for the job, but he may well pose a threat to our national security.”

Republicans stumbling from the wreckage of a terrible week are worrying about how to contain the damage further down the ballot paper in November as people running for seats in Congress and at state level risk being swept away. Many Republicans in vulnerable races are now going out of their way to distance themselves from their party’s nominee – Mike Coffman, a four-term incumbent from Colorado, is openly running an ad where he promises to “stand up to Trump”.

In particular, Trump’s attacks on the Khan family, the parents of a Muslim American soldier who died in combat, are hurting him. One Republican close to the campaign noted that this is quite unlike other controversies, which did not affect Trump with his key supporters: “You can’t piss off military families,” the Republican said. “And he’s pissed them off with this.”

The Republican source noted that the campaign seems to have gone on autopilot, with campaign manager Paul Manafort “mailing it in”. In particular, Manafort already seemed to have started to publicly deflect blame onto his candidate, telling Fox News: “Well, first of all the candidate is in control of his campaign. That’s number one. And I’m in control of doing the things that he wants me to do in the campaign.”

When Trump, who has often bragged about being “a counter-puncher”, went after the Khans, no one inside the camp was quick enough to spot the controversy. With Trump travelling the country and the bulk of the campaign apparatus at Trump Tower in New York, no one was by Trump’s side to urge him to tamp down his rhetoric.

The problem for Trump, noted the source, is that “at some point there’s just not enough people to keep insulting to be successful”.

The fight over the Khan family not only damaged Trump personally but it meant that he missed repeated opportunities to criticize Hillary Clinton, who wrongly claimed last Sunday that FBI director James Comey had exonerated her on her use of private email server. At his rallies, Trump has repeatedly mentioned the statement – which received a “pants on fire” rating from independent fact checker Politifact – but it has been buried in the news as Trump veered wildly off-message.

Yet the most damaging statement by Trump in recent days may not have been his unsympathetic attacks on the Khan family. Instead, by declining to endorse Paul Ryan, the Republican nominee may have opened a permanent rift between himself and the party establishment.

Not only is Ryan the highest ranking elected Republican in the country, he is also close friends with Reince Priebus, the chair of the Republican National Committee, who has gone out of his way since Trump clinched the nomination to aid his campaign.

The RNC worked with Trump to ensure there were no last ditch attempts to deny him the nomination at the convention in Cleveland last month and has worked hard to vouch for him as a credible nominee.

The resulting furor, which has already caused Trump’s running mate, Indiana governor Mike Pence, to distance himself from the party’s nominee, has left Trump even more of a political pariah.

Ryan faces a rightwing challenger next week for his Wisconsin seat in a primary he is expected to win easily against an opponent who has echoed the Trump rhetoric by suggesting the deportation of all Muslims from the United States. But the contest will illuminate the Republican family feud.

Trump further amplified the intra-party rancor in a Washington Post interview by refusing to endorse John McCain, the Arizona senator who is a decorated war hero and the GOP’s 2008 presidential nominee. Trump also bashed New Hampshire senator Kelly Ayotte, a rising Republican star who is also up for re-election, as someone who has given him “no support”, characterizing her as “weak”.

Eventually, at a rally in Green Bay, Wisconsin, on Friday night, Trump endorsed all three in a stilted statement read off a sheet of paper. He made clear that he “fully supported and endorsed” the three Republican incumbents, although Trump noted that “he and Ryan may disagree on a few things”.

Trump also went out of his way to say that he held McCain “in the highest esteem” after saying last year that the Arizona senator, who was repeatedly tortured as a prisoner of war during the Vietnam war, was “not a war hero” because he was captured.

Yet as the discord increases, other Republicans see advantage – and hope – in distancing themselves from Trump. Paul Ryan has already sent out a fundraising email warning of the consequences of President Hillary Clinton without Republican majorities in Congress to check her.

Further, when told about Trump’s remarks about Ayotte, a well-connected Republican in New Hampshire viewed the attack as a blessing, which would allow her to distance herself from Trump in pursuit of votes from independents and suburban women.

Is there anything Trump can do to recover from his terrible week? One top aide who worked on the campaign of one of Trump’s Republican rivals in the primary season said: “I think it’s clear now, these are two hugely flawed candidates and whoever speaks the least for the next 90 days probably wins ... If I were Trump’s team I would try to send him to play golf in Scotland for a while.”