Donald Trump’s Last Stand Will a better debate performance stop GOP defections?
http://www.wsj.com/articles/trumps-last-stand-1476041590
Beyond its vulgar details, Americans didn’t learn much new about Donald Trump in the video of his sexual boasting with Billy Bush. Anybody paying attention already knew Mr. Trump is crude and loutish and given to crassly judging women by their looks. His exchange with Megyn Kelly of Fox News in the first GOP debate made that clear. Republican voters nominated him despite these risks, and the release of an especially lewd and nasty 11-year-old tape put Mr. Trump’s candidacy in crisis as he faced the second presidential debate Sunday night.
Our email inbox is filled with Republicans saying this is a double standard because while Mr. Trump may talk like a lout, Bill Clinton acts like one and Hillary Clinton enables him. Oh, and Democrats still revere JFK, who was a sexual predator in the White House.
This is all true, and it is a bit much to see the same liberals who said Mr. Clinton’s actual exploitation of an intern was merely about sex, or who called Paula Jones trailer trash, now wax indignant about Mr. Trump’s bragging. The same moralists who celebrate misogyny in pop music and a sex-crazed culture are also conveniently outraged by a man who was marinated in that culture before he entered politics.
Yet as a matter of cold political reality these objections don’t matter. Mr. Trump’s behavior is offensive to traditional standards of decent male behavior, and conservatives rightly made the case that “character counts” against Mr. Clinton in the White House.
Even before the tape and his half-apologies, Mr. Trump was underperforming with college-educated Republicans, especially women. The tape may disqualify him with these voters, and more such tapes may surface. Democrats know how to do opposition research, and Mr. Trump’s past is an opponent’s field of dreams.
This is the political reality that Mr. Trump confronted Sunday night, and the question was whether he did enough to repair the damage to his candidacy by asking voters to look past his comments to the larger stakes of the election. On that score he did better on the issues than he did in apologizing.
Mr. Trump was less effective in the first half hour because his apology for the tape seemed too grudging. He also couldn’t resist going after Bill Clinton’s sexual abuses, which didn’t make Mr. Trump look any more presidential. Americans already know about the Clinton deceptions about sex, which is one reason polls show that most Americans don’t want to vote for Hillary. That’s the main—the only—reason Mr. Trump is still within striking distance after his many blunders.
Mr. Trump’s problem is that voters aren’t sure they trust him to sit in the Oval Office. His lack of impulse control, his inability to take criticism, his 3 a.m. Twitter rants and his seeming failure to prepare for debates all reinforce the doubts the Clinton campaign is raising about his immaturity and temperament.
On the issues Mr. Trump was much better prepared on Sunday, and he kept Mrs. Clinton on the defensive on taxes, ObamaCare and her own ethical problems with her private email server. She isn’t any better than Mr. Trump at apologizing, and we’ll bet Mrs. Clinton doesn’t try citing Abraham Lincoln again as a defense of her private versus public persona. Mr. Trump’s riposte about “Honest Abe” exposed the falsity of that answer.
On the other hand Mr. Trump offered up a convoluted mess on Syria, criticizing the Obama Administration for its failures but without any clear idea of what to do about it. He should listen to his running mate, Mike Pence, on the subject instead of disagreeing with him.
The question that will take some time to answer is whether his performance was strong enough to stop the defection of Republicans who have been saying publicly since Friday that he should drop off the ticket in favor of Mr. Pence. We’d prefer Mr. Pence as President too, but this election isn’t about us. It’s about the American public, and millions of voters put Mr. Trump on the ballot. Republicans would find it very difficult to replace Mr. Trump at this late stage of the race unless Mr. Trump agrees to voluntarily recede, and on Saturday he told the Journal there is “zero chance I’ll quit.” CONTINUE AT SITE
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