When the temperature of a political campaign turns up, one of the hardest traits for a candidate to preserve is patience.
At even the most marginal signs of turbulence, the pressure to react, recalibrate or reverse is enormous. It flows from a steady trickle of public polling, from a relentless swarm of media, from self-important donors and even from anxiety-ridden advisers within the operation. And it can lead to grave miscalculation.
Nothing has tested the fortitude of the cavalcade of 2016 presidential aspirants like the emergence of Donald Trump, who has defied political science by advancing a polling lead in the Republican primary for seven straight weeks now.
Rival campaigns cling firmly to the notion that the bile and bombast will lose its charm and that his candidacy will eventually dissolve into a messy cloud of dust. But even if that turns out to be true, the intervening impact of his candidacy on the rest of the contenders is already visible.
Trump has not only ridden over his competitors, he's more importantly rattled their psyches. After initially shrugging him off as a flash-in-the-pan celebrity candidate, a handful of rivals decided to counter the real estate mogul with their own show of strength. Yet attempting to out-Trump The Donald at his own game of impulsive verbal warfare has proved to be ineffective and even damaging. Trump laid the bait, and many fell into his trap.
"It's difficult to go head to head with Trump in an exchange of statements or tweets and come out the victor. In the best-case scenario, you come out a draw," says John Sides, author of "The Gamble: Choice and Chance in the 2012 Presidential Election."
After a month of trying to fight fire with fire, many Republican operatives tied to the campaigns are now urging calm and restraint. It's easy to read too much into the early score right now, but most of the game has yet to be played, they warn. Candidates who keep trained on their core message and resist becoming a supporting actor in the Trump show may be better off in the long run.
"At this point, ignore him and stay the course," says Mike Dennehy, a New Hampshire adviser to former Texas Gov. Rick Perry. "I am a firm believer that you try to run positive until it's absolutely necessary to contrast. And with such a large field, the contrast or attack will likely help another candidate rather than your own."
His guidance is particularly prescient given the experience of Perry, who dedicated an entire speech in Washington to lambasting Trump as a cancer on the party on July 22. Since then, Perry's fundraising has dried up, forcing his campaign team to work without pay, and his polling numbers have shriveled.
Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, who took a gamble going at Trump for failing to rule out a third-party run at the outset of the first debate, has also seen his position in the race depreciate to single digits. Asked about his sliding numbers on a conference call this week, Paul noted, "All these questions can go to the other candidates as well. The polls are a very temporary temperature."
South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, one of the most dogged Trump critics who told CNN Tuesday he'd "beat [Trump's] brains out" in the Palmetto State, registered 0 percent in the last two national polls of the primary and just 4 percent in his home state. Before Trump was in the race, Graham polled in the double digits there.
"One of the great honors is that everyone who attacks me seems to go down," Trump boasted gleefully last week.
But even those who have been more careful about poking Trump have fallen victim in other ways, like emulation.
As Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker made his way through the Iowa State Fair, he was pelted with questions about Trump's plan to scrap birthright citizenship. After first appearing to embrace the idea, he later said he wasn't taking a position either way. Then, he finally said he was against amending the Constitution to get rid of birthright citizenship.
It was a clumsy string of answers by a candidate who has already shown a proclivity for changing positions due to political pressure. While a Walker aide would not concede Trump was the reason for the scattered responses, some Republicans fear the governor's lurching will ultimately make him less palatable to mainstream GOPers down the road.
"The most important thing for Team Walker is to stay with our game plan," says David Polyansky, Walker's Iowa strategist.
But to much of the rest of the political world, it looked as if the heat of the Trump show had gotten to Walker.
One political hand unaligned with a candidate deemed Walker's flailing as "an overreaction to his little slump."
"There's an example of someone being pulled in different directions trying to play Trump's game," says a consultant working for Jeb Bush, who requested anonymity to avoid publicly criticizing another candidate.
Bush, who once promised not to attack his fellow Republican rivals, has decided to ramp up his responses to Trump, predominantly on policy issues. But the answers that have provided the most ammunition for Democrats have stemmed from issues first raised by Trump, including immigration.
Bush followed Trump in invoking "anchor babies" – a disparaging term that describes children born to immigrants in the country illegally. While the former Florida governor appeared uncomfortable using the phrase – "Do you have a better term?" he sniped at reporters in New Hampshire – he doubled down on it in defiance of political correctness. Days later, in a move that displayed his weariness with the entire episode, he clarified that his use of "anchor babies" referred mostly to "Asian people coming into our country."
That only caused the ire of more immigrant groups.
Hillary Clinton's campaign produced a video splicing Bush's and Trump's comments together with a final clip of Clinton declaring with delight that "most of the other candidates are just Trump without the pizazz or the hair."
Bush's team believes they are engaging Trump on their own terms, while remaining consistent on substance. But there's a thin line between responding and becoming a pawn for Trump.
"You contrast with Trump on issues and substance, of which he has little. And, you don't allow the media or Trump himself to make you a contestant in his game show," says Jamie Burnett, a political consultant and Bush backer in New Hampshire.
At the moment, Bush isn't competing for the same lot of anti-establishment voters gravitating toward Trump. As other candidates begin to fade and drop out this fall, the Bush team sees itself well-positioned to be still standing against him.
"Emotion is a losing battle and certainly at some point, policy and ability to deliver on your vision for the country is going to be an important consideration for voters in South Carolina," says Jim Dyke, a Bush adviser in South Carolina.
When the race settles down and begins to gel, the operating thinking is that Republican voters will also begin seriously weighing electability, which will begin to lead to Trump's demise.
But in the meantime, his power to weaken a foe can be advantageous.
Maybe that's why the top adviser to Bush's super PAC is attempting to goad Ohio Gov. John Kasich into responding to Trump.
Last weekend in The Columbus Dispatch, Bush ally Mike Murphy of Right to Rise said while Bush is demonstrating leadership by taking on Trump, Kasich "takes the 5th" and "seems to be afraid to draw any distinction."
Kasich has steered clear so far, only thanking Trump for drawing 24 million viewers to the first debate. It looks like it's been a smart move. He's now overtaken Bush in New Hampshire, vaulting into second place.
There are still five long months until voting – an eternity for narratives, events and polls to shift and shift again. If Trump is still soaring into October, a more aggressive approach may be warranted.
"If any candidate has a disagreement with him on policy, it seems like it might be smart to point that out. Whether it's a winning battle is yet to be seen, but historically differences in policy have been motivating to people one way or another," Dyke says.
Trump is an unprecedented candidate, but history is all anyone has to go on.
Remember Howard Dean? The hard-charging, gate-storming 2004 insurgent for the Democratic Party nomination didn't crash and burn until the closing week before the Iowa caucuses. All the prior emotional drama was overcome by a sense of political sobriety.
Many Republicans are slowly coming to the conclusion that a singular campaign can't take down Trump, but that a smart and steady one will outlast him.
"Trump will likely collapse on his own," Dennehy says. "I refuse to believe that even a plurality of Republicans will want him as their nominee come next February." http://www.usnews.com/news/the-report/articles/2015/08/27/how-the-gop-candidates-can-survive-the-trump-show?int=a14709---------------------------
