(CNN)Donald Trump’s campaign has always been about Trump. It hasn’t been about the party and it hasn’t really been about policy. It’s been about the man himself. And for many months, it seemed that there was ample room in the GOP, and even in broader parts of the electorate, for his renegade style.
But in recent weeks, the value of the Trump brand has been plummeting, especially since the release of the “Access Hollywood” tape. Polls show that the distance between Hillary Clinton and Trump is growing.
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Congressional Republicans are seriously worried about the possibility of Democrats retaking control of the Senate and possibly the House. Trump’s campaign theme seems to have switched from “Make America Great Again” to “I’m a victim.”
The New York Times reported that several major donors are urging the Republican National Committee to separate themselves from the Republican nominee for fear the party will suffer irreversible damage.
Trump delivered a conspiratorial — and, some thought, borderline anti-Semitic — speech in Palm Beach: “Hillary Clinton meets in secret with international banks to plan the destruction of global sovereignty in order to enrich these global interest powers.”
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This speech, combined with his scorched-earth attacks on Bill Clinton’s sexual past, have led many to conclude that his campaign is literally spinning out of control.
When historians look back at this campaign, one of the key turning points will undoubtedly be the Democratic convention, where Khizr Khan delivered a riveting speech castigating the arguments that Trump had made. When Trump responded by attacking Khan and his wife, the parents of a slain Muslim-American soldier,, many Americans were dismayed by what they saw.
Some Americans who might agree with his attacks on curbing speech in the name of “political correctness” might not have felt as good after watching and hearing the off-camera clip from “Entertainment Tonight” in 1992, when Trump can be seen glancing at a group of young girls and saying that he, a 46-year-old, would be dating one of them in about 10 years.
His “I’ll get things done” approach looked less and less like the words of a man who would be efficient and productive and more like someone who employs authoritarian rhetoric. Many opponents had been warning about this, starting in the late summer as Americans witnessed events and heard comments that seemed to make the warnings more real.
‘Lock her up’ is what dictators do
When the Republican convention revolved around the chants of “lock her up,” referring to Clinton, the tenor of the campaign became darker.
When Trump quipped at the second debate that if he was president, Clinton would be in jail, many observers shuddered, hearing the kinds of threats that fly in the face of our democratic traditions.
“It’s a chilling thought,” commented Michael Chertoff, who served as secretary of Homeland Security under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama. “It smacks of what we read about tin-pot dictators in other parts of the world, where, when they win an election, their first move is to imprison opponents.”