More and more Republicans are running for the lifeboats.
With President Trump sinking in the polls less than three weeks before the November elections, a growing number of GOP lawmakers are scrambling to distance themselves from their party’s embattled standard-bearer — a shift that’s both illuminated Trump’s tumultuous tenure in the White House and driven cracks in the GOP’s united front at a particularly inconvenient moment for the unpopular president.
The changing tone marks a risky shift for the GOP. Trump remains widely popular with the party’s conservative base, and any signs of abandoning the president in the final campaign stretch could imperil vulnerable down-ballot Republicans, particularly in the Senate, where McConnell is fighting to maintain his slim majority.
Yet with top Republicans openly warning of a GOP massacre on Nov. 3, many are arguing that endangered Republicans need to do what they can to divorce themselves from Trump and preserve their last line of defense: the GOP’s fragile Senate majority.
https://thehill.com/homenews/house/521433-republicans-increasingly-seek-distance-from-trump