The GOP Civil War Is About To Get Very Messy

The internal war in the GOP between the Republican establishment, especially its Congressional leaders, and Donald Trump and his large swath of supporters is going to get really ugly. Today, rumors surfaced in the fever swamps of the right that Paul Ryan advisor, Dan Senor, was actually responsible for passing the now infamous “Access Hollywood” tape to the Washington Post. According to the right-wing conspiracy theorists, the idea was for Ryan to invite Trump to campaign with him, then leak the story so he could be openly seen as distancing himself from Trump when he dis-invited him from the campaign appearance. The underlying idea was to give down-ballot Republicans space to also distance themselves from Trump. But, as polls have shown, Republicans are in trouble whether they withdraw their endorsement of Trump or not. In response, Trump has been blistering defecting Congressional Republicans with vicious tweet-storms all day today.

Now, I truly doubt that Ryan had anything to do with this. But if he did, it was one of the worst political decisions ever. In any case, if this is any indication of what the remainder of the campaign will look like, it may take a long, long time for the Republican party to recover.