Kelly: Doubts among Trump faithful

But after what he saw last week, Weingarten reluctantly concedes that he may be among a diminishing cadre of Republican stalwarts left in Trumpland.

The group ranges from Tea Party main­stays like Weingarten to veteran conservatives who still long for a candidate in the mold of Ronald Reagan, to vocal supporters of such recent presidential hopefuls as Ted Cruz and Ron Paul.

In a variety of interviews, many expressed deep misgivings about whether the Republican Party — and even Trump’s candidacy — can withstand more of the missteps, miscalculations and missed opportunities of the past week. But they don’t know where else to go.

“Was this a bad week? Yes,” said Weingarten. “Would I tell Trump to do things differently? Yes.”

In a presidential campaign that seems to breed chaos and controversy on an hourly basis, the series of cascading slip-ups by the Republican nominee last week was noteworthy — perhaps even transformative — in how it generated a swelling tide of deepening doubts about Trump’s competency as the nation’s leader and even his mental stability.

Such long-simmering reservations about Trump burst into full view with his harsh criticism early in the week of the Muslim parents of a heroic U.S. soldier who had been killed in Iraq. The worries were further heightened amid reports of Trump musing — possibly joking — about launching a nuclear attack; appointing his daughter, Ivanka, to a Cabinet post, even though she had no government experience; callously dismissing a mother with a crying baby; and even suggesting that he might ultimately lose because “the election’s going to be rigged.”

Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton opened up a commanding lead over the gaffe-riddled Trump, as much as 15 points in a new McClatchy-Marist poll that also showed the Republican nominee losing support among his most loyal base of voters, white men.

Just as significant perhaps, several notable Republicans not only dropped their support for Trump but publicly declared they would vote for Clinton, the Democrat. These included two former allies of Governor Christie’s — Meg Whitman, the GOP fundraiser and wealthy California business executive; and Maria Comella, the governor’s influential former communications chief who helped to shape his confrontational image as a blunt speaker.

Such defections, however, left open another difficult set of question about Trump: What about those supporters left behind — in particular, the Republicans who are so disdainful of Clinton that they couldn’t ever imagine supporting her? What do they think of Trump now? And how will they reconcile what many now concede are their own rising doubts about him?

This is where Weingarten’s story is important.

Like many in the Tea Party movement, Weingarten sees himself as a student of policy. He has not only extensively studied Clinton’s background and proposals, but he has delved into Trump’s positions as well.

He is not entirely happy with the thought of a Trump presidency. For one thing, Weingarten wonders if Trump is conservative enough. But Weingarten had come to believe that Trump would surely be a better president than Clinton, whom he regards as deeply corrupt.

But then came the events of last week, especially Trump’s harsh jabs at Khizr and Ghazala Khan of Maryland, the Pakistani-American parents of a decorated U.S. Army captain killed in Iraq in 2004. With his wife by his side, Khizr Khan sharply criticized Trump during a nationally televised speech at the Democratic National Convention last month in Philadelphia, saying of Trump: “You have sacrificed nothing and no one.”

Several days later, Trump fired back, claiming he had sacrificed much — as a builder and businessman — and implying that Ghazala Khan had remained silent by her husband’s side because of the female subservience that is customary in some traditional strains of Islam.

Ghazala Khan later said she kept silent because she was in so much pain over the death of her son, Capt. Humayun Khan, who was awarded the Bronze Star for ordering his unit to take cover while he single-handedly confronted a suicide bomber in Iraq.

“Trump would have been better served if he didn’t go after the Khans,” Weingarten said.

But Weingarten was not about to give up on Trump’s candidacy, pointing out that the Republican nominee has often rebounded from other mistakes.

“So far the buttons he’s been pushing have been turning out right,” Weingarten said.

That hope — however dimmed after last week’s events and Trump’s slide in the polls — is the strand that many of Trump’s most loyal supporters cling to now.

Many say they now know what to expect from Trump. He generally speaks without a script. And in interviews, he is prone to offer caustic comments about all manner of people. And while Trump has been harshly criticized before for his ill-considered comments — such as disparaging the status of Arizona senator and former Vietnam prisoner of war John McCain as a hero — he has still managed to not only win the Republican presidential nomination but remain relatively close in polls to Clinton, sometimes even leading her.

State Sen. Michael Doherty, the Warren County Republican who was the first key state legislator last year to break with his party’s backing of Governor Christie’s presidential campaign and support Trump, said he wishes Trump did not get into an oral spat with the Khans.

But Doherty, a West Point graduate and a retired U.S. Army captain whose three sons now serve in the military, said he was still supporting Trump, though not without misgivings.

“I’m disappointed because he needs to improve his level of discipline,” Doherty said of Trump, adding that when it came to the Khan family, it “would be better for him and the campaign to keep the blinders on” and focus more attention on Clinton’s faults.

Doherty described Trump as an “alpha male hunter” who “needs to realize that by remaining disciplined, it’s not always best to shoot that target just because you see it.”

“We need to get back on the issues that the American people care about,” Doherty said, citing what he described as a faltering economy, excesses of Wall Street and a misguided foreign policy in the Middle East.

“I think Donald Trump at the end of the day likes to win, and he’s going to figure it out real quick,” Doherty said. “I do think he’s going to be disciplined.”

How that discipline will evolve — and stabilize — is still guesswork. Several notable Republicans, including former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, have reportedly suggested conducting what has been described as an intervention with Trump to force him to shape up.

Late in the week, in what was viewed as a peace offering, Trump reversed course and endorsed GOP stalwarts House Speaker Paul Ryan and McCain.

But many others say Trump marches to his own beat — a tendency that, while admirable at times, has also become deeply worrisome.

A key North Jersey Republican leader and Trump supporter, who asked to remain anonymous so as not to divide his party further, conceded that his “style drives me out of my mind.”

“He’s a nightmare as a candidate,” this leader said. “Donald is just one statement away from disaster at any given time.”

Such sentiments, while still often kept private, were nonetheless decidedly common in a variety of interviews with New Jersey Republicans. Many see Clinton as a deeply flawed opponent — and, therefore, easily beatable in the November election. At the same time, however, many see Trump as too prone to tripping over himself, and turning off independent voters.

Patrick Murray, the director of the Monmouth University poll, said he has already detected that voters are increasingly disenchanted with Trump’s unpredictable style, especially amid what Murray described as last week’s “significant” run of controversial statements.

Murray said that an increasing number of Republican voters are “getting the message that Trump is more dangerous than Hillary Clinton.”

“This is where Republican stalwarts who felt they could still cast a ballot for Donald Trump and it would not be a dangerous vote have started to turn,” Murray said. “It was a nagging doubt for these voters. That doubt has now bubbled to the surface.”

Steve Lonegan, the former Bogota mayor and conservative Republican who directed the GOP presidential campaign in New Jersey on behalf of Cruz, the Texas senator, said he had considered switching to Trump but has become so disenchanted that he may not even cast a vote for president.

“I’m definitely not voting for Hillary. And I’m not voting for Trump,” said Lonegan.

Lonegan said he has major doubts about what he described as Trump’s “mental stability” as well as his ability to comprehend the scope and nuances of major economic and security issues.

“Maybe Trump will have an epiphany and suddenly a light will go on,” Lonegan said. “I wouldn’t hold my breath. The party will go down to cataclysmic defeat if he is the candidate. That’s what I see happening.”

Other staunch conservatives still hope Trump can bounce back.

Jeffrey Bell, a part-time resident of Leonia who went on to become an aide to Presidents Richard Nixon and Reagan and later launch three failed campaigns to win a U.S. Senate seat in New Jersey, said it would be a mistake to dismiss Trump now or for “the Donald” to tone down his rhetoric.

“The temptation is that he just needs to be less controversial — in other words, he needs to sound more like [2012 GOP presidential nominee] Mitt Romney,” said Bell, the policy director of the American Principles Project, a conservative think tank in Washington. “I’m not somebody who agrees with that. Romney lost. And one reason he lost is that he was very passive.”

Bell conceded that he has “a lot of doubt about Trump.” Compared to Clinton, however, he would take his chances with Trump, Bell said.

“I have a lot of uncertainty about Donald Trump,” said Bell, who divides his time between residences in northern Virginia and Leonia. “I don’t know what he’s going to say next. I don’t know what sort of president he will be. But I know what Hillary is.”

That sort of difficult calculus may likely become common among Republicans. While they may harbor deep misgivings about a Trump presidency, they certainly can’t stomach Hillary Clinton in the White House.

For Jeffrey Weingarten of the New Jersey Tea Party, the choice is easy, wherever it leads.

“Trump has touched something in the electorate,” he said. “We’re not going back to politics as usual. What the evolution is, I can’t say.”