October 10, 2016 03:38 PM UTC

"Radio Silence" from National Republicans on Trump

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• by: Colorado Pols

UPDATE: Alrighty, then:

#Breaking: Priebus declares RNC standing behind Trump https://t.co/kkupVA6tyd pic.twitter.com/gIC18rACtZ

— POLITICO (@politico) October 10, 2016

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As Politico reports, Republicans across the country aren’t sure what to do about Presidential candidate Donald Trump as the Big Orange’s campaign craters:

As Donald Trump’s campaign unravels, the Republican National Committee has gone dark — failing to give GOP vendors guidance on whether to keep working for the nominee or to move resources into down-ballot races, and not even returning calls from party members ahead of a critical late-afternoon meeting about the way forward.

Numerous Republicans on Monday used the same phrase to describe the response of the RNC to their questions: “radio silence.”

The RNC plans to conduct a closed conference call with members on Monday at 5 p.m., but numerous Republicans said they could not get through to the committee all day. And vendors working on Trump Victory, the effort dedicated to winning the White House, still have not yet been given the green light to restart pro-Trump mailings just four weeks until the election. On Saturday, one day after the bombshell tape was released, the committee sent an email to mail vendors asking them to “put a hold/stop on all mail projects.”

The Politico story has been updated to include a response from an RNC spokesperson that national campaign efforts are moving ahead as scheduled, whatever that means. Meanwhile, Republicans are apparently still trying to assess the down ballot damage from Trump’s implosion. Via a separate Politico story, here’s how the concern plays out:

Ben Tulchin, a Democratic pollster, said a 6-point lead for Clinton in national polls would give Democrats a long shot at winning back the House. An 8-point lead would really put the House in play, Tulchin wrote in an email, and a double-digit lead would give Democrats “very good chances of winning back the House.”

While some campaigns and media outlets ran polls over the weekend, it is still early to judge the overall impact. Republican strategists warned Monday that they still need more time to get a full picture of how much damage the Trump tape does to their hopes of protecting Senate and House majorities. A half-dozen pollsters from both parties working on House races say that they don’t expect useful internal polling data to come in until midweek at the earliest.

Adding to their troubles, Republicans are still trying to figure out how to hold on to Trump’s fervent supporters while candidates try to distance themselves from the top of the ticket with just 29 days remaining until Election Day.