GOP Despairs As Trump Doubles Down On Being Trump

Just hours after Donald Trump's campaign announced Breitbart News Executive Chairman Steve Bannon would be its CEO, Republicans began bracing for the bottom to fall out of a presidential campaign many already acknowledged was spiraling out of control. "I feel like Trump has declared war on the Republican Party," said Matt Mackowiak, a Texas-based Republican strategist who has had a long list of concerns about Trump for awhile. “He is determined to punch through the floor and see how low he can go."

In the three states considered the key to Trump's electoral math–Florida, Pennsylvania, and Ohio–Trump is trailing. He is so far behind at this point – in building infrastructure and in the polls –that electoral experts are warning that even if pulled out victories in those three states he could still potentially lose the White House as he loses ground in states Mitt Romney won in 2012.

Since formally winning the Republican nomination on July 19, Trump has backed away from decades' old commitments to U.S. NATO alliances, coldly attacked a Gold Star family, called on Russian hackers to find Hillary Clinton's emails, asked his Second Amendment supporters "to do something" to prevent Clinton from selecting Supreme Court justices if she were elected and repeatedly said Obama founded ISIS. With just 82 days until Election Day, the "pivot" that Republican strategists and reluctant congressional supporters were holding out hope for is a quaint relic from the days when Trump was just beginning to familiarize himself with a TelePrompter.

"I am who I am," Trump told WKBT-TV in Wisconsin during a one-on-one interview. "It's me. I don't want to change. Everyone talks about 'oh are you gonna pivot?' I don't want to pivot. I mean you have to be you. If you start pivoting, you are not being honest with people."

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