The 'Turtle' hides...

McConnell goes underground on Trump

Unlike Paul Ryan, the Senate GOP leader is keeping a low profile as the nominee's campaign nosedives. 

By Burgess Everett and Seung Min Kim

Senate Republicans know their already tenuous majority is imperiled further by Donald Trump’s disastrous weekend. But unlike House Speaker Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell is not actively pulling back from the Republican nominee — at least not yet.

McConnell is counseling individual senators and candidates about how to position themselves alongside Trump — without dictating strategy — as he talks them through the political perils of this election cycle, GOP sources said. Officials at the National Republican Senatorial Committee spent all weekend talking to candidates and campaign aides, urging them to be prepared to talk about Trump wherever they go but declining to offer explicit advice on whether Republicans should pull their support from Trump.

Senate Republicans say they have little control over Trump's campaign, and preventing outright disarray in their conference is the best defense they have against being dragged down by his erratic behavior. Republicans are still waiting until later this week to see just how bad the damage is in battleground states before they consider reevaluating their support for the Republican nominee, who was caught on tape in 2005 boasting about sexual conquests and describing grabbing women's genitals.

“I believe that across the board we’re going to see crazy numbers,” said a top Republican official working on Senate races, who lamented that “as of Thursday/Friday morning our field models showed that we were holding the majority.”

Pressure is building on Senate Republicans to choose now whether to disassociate themselves with Trump or stand with him. An NBC national poll taken after the "Access Hollywood" video was published showed Hillary Clinton besting Trump by 11 points.

“If you don’t have a statement, we want you to prepare them,” the official said of incumbent senators and Senate candidates. What the statement says about Trump is “up to you.”

Many Republicans are watching McConnell closely for a signal of what to do, as his initial criticism of Trump’s “repugnant” comments about women were among the harshest issued on Friday. Yet he’s been far more circumspect than Ryan, who held a public appearance on Saturday, then a conference call with House members on Monday, where he announced that he would focus exclusively on campaigning to save the GOP congressional majority. McConnell's posture has a silver lining: Trump immediately attacked Ryan afterward, so the Senate Republican leader is at least not locked in an intraparty brawl a month before the election.

Senate Republicans have no such plans as they try to keep their 54-seat majority, an effort that will rely on Trump voters turning out for candidates, including some who have broken with his campaign. McConnell refused Monday to make any new statement about his support of Trump’s candidacy after Sunday’s debate, which has paralyzed many Republicans who said they were waiting to see whether the nominee would implode in St. Louis.

"I don't have any observations to make about the campaign," McConnell said, according to The Associated Press. He said any comments about Trump "are immediately sort of spun around the world and I don't have anything to add on the presidential race today."

Senate aides or strategists interviewed by POLITICO on Monday said that while Trump’s debate performance wasn't bad enough to summarily abandon him, it also wasn't good enough to warrant a reaffirmation of their commitment to the embattled candidate.

“My sense is, if you didn't [unendorse] on Saturday, I don't think he gave you a reason to do it today,” said a second Republican official.

Instead, NRSC officials tried to go back on offense on Monday, drilling former Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.) over his personal wealth and work as a Washington consultant and attempting to paint North Carolina Senate candidate Deborah Ross as a “radical” who defended sex offenders in the past. Those attacks have been lost in the furor over Trump’s comments and the overall Republican retreat from his candidacy in the past 48 hours.

A spokesman for Bayh’s opponent in the Indiana Senate race, Rep. Todd Young (R-Ind.), would not elaborate on Young’s position on Trump, instead declaring that “Bayh is desperate to distract from his corrupt past" — referring to newly released personal financial disclosure forms that showed Bayh's wealth increased dramatically since he left the Senate in 2010.

Including Young, a striking number of Republicans in tough Senate races — Sens. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, Richard Burr of North Carolina, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Marco Rubio of Florida — still have offered little clarity on their support of Trump. Meanwhile Sens. Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire, John McCain of Arizona and Rob Portman of Ohio and Rep. Joe Heck (R-Nev.) have all come out against Trump, muddling the Republican position significantly. And Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), the No. 3 Senate Republican, broke from the cautious party strategy and is still the only congressional leader to oppose Trump.

Toomey remained as ambiguous as ever on the controversial GOP nominee in a new statement Monday, saying the nasty Sunday night brawl in St. Louis “again showed the shortcomings of both presidential candidates.” Toomey canceled a planned visit to a high school on Monday, according to a local news report, but is expected to be on the campaign trail this week, including Tuesday in Philadelphia.

“I have not endorsed Donald Trump and I have repeatedly spoken out against his flawed policies, and his outrageous comments, including his indefensible and appalling comments about women,” Toomey said in a statement Monday. Accusing his challenger Katie McGinty of staying silent on Hillary Clinton’s own weaknesses, Toomey added: “Pennsylvania deserves a senator who will cross party lines and provide independent leadership, not a rubber stamp for a very flawed president.”

McGinty was one of two Senate Democratic candidates who held dueling conference calls Monday to rebuke Republican opponents who have stayed quiet on whether they would support Trump in light of the video disclosed Friday.

“He knows he cannot look at beautiful young teenagers in the eye [while] still standing next to a guy of such rude and totally unacceptable character and behavior,” McGinty told reporters. “It’s past time for Sen. Toomey to denounce Donald Trump thoroughly.”

Rubio, who mocked Trump’s anatomy and called him a “con man” in the Republican presidential primary, has said nothing since criticizing Trump’s lewd and sexually aggressive rhetoric revealed in a 2005 “Access Hollywood” clip that pushed dozens of Republican elected officials away from Trump. His rival for the Senate seat, Rep. Patrick Murphy (D-Fla.), spent Monday morning seizing on Rubio’s silence. Republicans have instructed campaign staffers to say nothing about Trump until after they've released an official statement, which has Democrats attacking their opponents as cowardly.

Rubio needs to “withdraw his endorsement or withdraw from the race,” Murphy told reporters.

Yet in Florida, Democrats are in their own pickle: They canceled millions of dollars in ad buys aimed at Rubio right as a new poll showed the race closer than it’s been in a month — and that was before Trump’s latest bout of self destruction. Murphy said Monday that he always knew he’d be outspent by Rubio, but he signaled to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and Senate Majority PAC that he’s not dead yet.

“I can’t control what these outside groups do. Always grateful for their support,” Murphy said on a conference call with reporters. “We were in a dead heat before these Trump comments shows how much of a race this is.”

Burr, who said Saturday he would gauge Trump's "level of contrition" to determine whether to continue supporting him, apparently found the Republican nominee's remorse sufficient, telling a Greensboro, North Carolina, television station that it was now up to voters to decide whether Trump's apology was genuine. He did not say he was withdrawing his support, adding: "My dad was a Presbyterian minister, and he always taught me in life you have to give someone the opportunity to apologize."

"We have got two individuals running for president that neither one are role models for the next generation. But that’s our choice, and we need to figure out who can get us to where America wants to be," Burr told WFMY, the CBS affiliate in Greensboro.

Meanwhile, the NRSC’s elected leadership isn’t moving to disavow Trump either, following McConnell’s lead in not explicitly undercutting their candidates and incumbent senators. NRSC Chairman Roger Wicker of Mississippi said he'd monitor Trump's attempts at apology but had nothing to add on Monday.

Two other NRSC vice chairs, Joni Ernst of Iowa and Tom Cotton of Arkansas, both said they would continue to support Trump. The third vice chair, Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.), came the closest of anyone in NRSC leadership to completely disavowing Trump after saying this weekend he’s “99 percent” against the GOP nominee.

"I said in the past that I was concerned with his rhetoric and this shows that my misgivings were correct,” Heller said in a statement to POLITICO on Monday. The NRSC vice chair never endorsed Trump.