Republican leaders and strategists are unnerved by Donald Trump’s erratic attacks on a Latina beauty queen and other outbursts this week, increasingly fearful that the GOP nominee is damaging his White House hopes and doing lasting damage to the party in the campaign’s final stretch.

Party officials said they are newly embarrassed by Trump’s impulsive behavior and exasperated by his inability to concentrate on his change message and frame the race as a referendum on Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, according to interviews with more than two dozen of them.

Senate and House candidates are ducking questions about Trump and distancing themselves, while Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has refused to talk about him. And few elected leaders are counseling him.

“Maybe every two weeks,” House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., told a crowd about how often he speaks with Trump.

Trump went into the first presidential debate Monday night in Hempstead, New York, with swagger, ahead or tied in some national and battleground-state polls and, momentarily at least, relatively disciplined on the stump. But his performance was widely panned and revealed his thin skin. In the days since, he has become distracted by old grudges and picked new fights, often involving female or minority targets.

Trump plunged into a feud with Alicia Machado, a Miss Universe winner he mocked and humiliated for her weight gain two decades ago. Also this week, Trump raised former president Bill Clinton’s past extramarital affairs as a campaign issue, delivered his most direct attack yet on Hillary Clinton’s health and waged war with news organizations over alleged bias.

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Reflecting upon Trump’s actions, Matt Borges, the Republican Party chairman in battleground Ohio, said, “Can this thing just end – please?”

“My God,” he sighed, “what a nightmare.”

Borges said he has personally urged Trump to run “a very disciplined, different kind of campaign,” although he remains confident that Trump will carry Ohio regardless.

Former Virginia congressman Thomas Davis, for decades one of the GOP’s top national campaign tacticians, said there is mounting concern that Trump’s lack of restraint is an anchor on him and the party.

“You’ve got the nomination of the party, and you’ve got a certain responsibility to the party to try to win this thing, but he gets sidetracked very easily,” Davis said. “He goes off on personal vendettas, and it’s just not helpful if you want to win. The tragedy is he has every opportunity to win.”

Polls show Clinton pulling away in several states, with seven-point leads in Michigan and New Hampshire. A Fox News national poll released Friday showed her ahead, 43 percent to 40 percent, in a four-way race, with Libertarian Gary Johnson and the Green Party’s Jill Stein.


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