WASHINGTON: With just 28 days left for the election, the Republican Party sees its own candidate, Donald Trump, as a hurricane and asked its members on Tuesday to keep checking their instruments for a safe landing.

Trump, an outsider who imposed himself on the party by winning the primaries, complained to his sympathisers that he’s getting ‘zero support’ from senior Republican leaders.

Greg Walden, chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, used the hurricane analogy in a private conference call with Republican lawmakers on Monday, urging them to stay away from Trump when “the bottom falls down”.

“It’s still unclear whether Hurricane Trump is a Category 1 or a Category 5, or whether he might be a Category 5 today but weaken to a Category 2 by Nov 8 in terms of the damage he could cause,” commented a popular news outlet, The Daily Beast, while reporting Congressman Walden’s remarks.

Trump’s anger, however, is focused on Speaker Paul Ryan, who said on Monday that he’s done defending the eccentric billionaire and will now focus on maintaining the party’s lead in the House of Representatives.

The US media interpreted Ryan’s message as acknowledgement by the country’s highest-ranking elected Republican that Trump cannot win the Nov 8 election and lawmakers should save themselves from the impact of this hurricane.

Trump responded by calling the speaker a “very weak and ineffective leader” and asked him to “spend more time on balancing the budget, jobs and illegal immigration.”

Trump has become increasingly unpopular since last Friday, when The Washington Post released a video tape that showed the Republican presidential candidate making lecherous remarks about women.

The second presidential debate on Sunday, when Trump admitted making those remarks but offered a very weak apology, added to his unpopularity.

Opinion surveys, released since Sunday, show that his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton now enjoys a double digit lead over him.

She also has a lead in the so-called swing states, which, unlike other states, are not solidly Republican or Democrat, and therefore play a key role in deciding who goes to the White House.

This week Hillary bagged another endorsement from the Bush family, which produced two Republican presidents in the recent past.

Lauren Bush Lauren posted a black and white photo of the Democratic candidate on her social media accounts with a caption announcing her decision to vote for Hillary. She follows her grandfather, former president George HW Bush, and cousin, Barbara Pierce Bush, who have already endorsed the Democrat.

Lauren Bush’s father-in-law, fashion designer Ralph Lauren, is designing Hillary’s dresses for major events during this campaign season.

But more important than these endorsements is the decision by key Republican lawmakers to ditch Trump. These are the lawmakers that face re-elections this season and so far they have been campaigning for Trump, besides seeking votes for themselves. But now they fear that they may lose their own seats if they continue supporting the Republican presidential candidate.

In a commentary on the election campaign, BBC warned that an “internecine strife among Republicans over Donald Trump risked escalating into a political bloodbath” as the party’s senior leaders wash their hands of their standard-bearer.

“Diehard Trumpistas are enraged by Republican bosses shunning their own presidential nominee” were lambasting them as ‘cowards’, BBC added.

The report also noted that Clinton held her biggest campaign event yet on Monday, drawing 18,500 people, in the battleground state of Ohio.

The Democratic candidate also vaulted to an 11-point national lead in an NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll conducted over the weekend.

Published in Dawn October 12th, 2016