Will the GOP finally ditch Trump after his campaign shakeup?

After Donald Trump&#039;s campaign shake-up, a political strategist implied that the GOP will pivot to focus on races in the House and Senate instead of the presidency.

(Image credit: Jeff Swensen/Getty Images)

published 17 August 2016

Late Tuesday night, Donald Trump's presidential campaign underwent its second major staffing overhaul. Most notably, campaign chair Paul Manafort — who replaced ousted campaign manager Corey Lewandowski in the first shake-up back in June — will see his role diminished after spending the summer trying to mold Trump into a general election candidate, with little success. Instead, veteran GOP consultant Kellyanne Conway and Breitbart News chairman Stephen Bannon, two close Trump confidants, will be elevated within Team Trump, and the addition of the two is widely seen as a move by Trump to consolidate power with people whose visions align more closely with his.

"Trump's stunning decision effectively ended the months-long push by [Manafort] to moderate Trump's presentation and pitch," The Washington Post wrote. "And it sent a signal, perhaps more clearly than ever, that the real-estate magnate intends to finish this race on his own terms." The Post also wrote that Trump's decision comes after Bannon had urged him "for months to not mount a fall campaign that makes Republican donors and officials comfortable … Instead, Bannon has been telling Trump to run more fully as an outsider and an unabashed nationalist." And the move does reportedly have some GOP strategists ready to ditch their party's standard-bearer:

In the weeks after Trump accepted the Republican nomination at the party's Cleveland convention, what polling bump existed for Trump has been eradicated following the candidate's string of bizarre choices: The very next morning after accepting the nomination, Trump revived ludicrous conspiracy theories about Sen. Ted Cruz's father, and since then he has publicly battled a Muslim-American Gold Star family, feinted declining to endorse House Speaker Paul Ryan for re-election, and flat-out admitted he does not "want to pivot" from his more bombastic primary persona into a moderate November candidate. With just 83 days to go until Election Day, it remains to be seen whether Trump's whole-hearted embrace of, well, himself, will lead the rest of the country to embrace him too — even if it costs him the (already waning) support of his own party.