Trump’s Endorsement of Roy Moore Points Up a GOP Problem: Chaos

As the party prepares for a midterm election that could bring a fierce backlash against a historically unpopular president, Republicans are growing more alarmed that a difficult race could be made worse without some semblance of planning to avert more discord.

Some top party officials say they are worried that the political environment may prove punishing enough to cost Republicans control of the House.

But an organization that can fend off such a landslide does not appear in the offing. In a departure from every modern White House, Mr. Trump himself largely dictates whom to back and how to support his preferred candidates. Even before tensions between the president and Senate Republicans flared back up over Mr. Moore’s candidacy, there was little regular communication between West Wing officials and Republicans overseeing the 2018 races, Republicans say.

The scheduled meetings between the White House, the Republican National Committee and the House and Senate campaign committees stopped months ago. Congressional officials find it difficult to get presidential signoffs for even small requests like using Mr. Trump’s name in direct-mail appeals, according to party officials. And less than a month until the election year begins, he has not scheduled a single fund-raiser for a candidate running for the House, Senate or governor.

Raj Shah, a White House spokesman, did not address the specifics of the relationship between the administration and the party, but said, “The president has led the R.N.C. toward record-breaking fund-raising, helped the party go 5-0 in special elections, and is leading the effort to elect Republican candidates running for office up and down the ballot.”

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Some top strategists involved with the midterm elections, including officials with the pre-eminent Republican Senate “super PAC,” say they have yet to set foot in the White House for political planning sessions. A Trump adviser insisted that meetings were taking place, but said that for legal reasons, they were not happening at the White House.

“What’s lacking is a central hierarchy in any decision making, which is critical to candidates across country,” said Scott Reed, the senior political strategist at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and a veteran of decades of campaigns. “You have this feeling that no one is fully in charge of Republican politics.”

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The White House political affairs office has been effectively replaced by Mr. Trump and his Twitter account, handcuffing the president’s advisers. Requests for presidential assistance or, as in the case of the Alabama race, intervention often go unanswered because Mr. Trump’s staff members cannot offer any commitments, not knowing what the president will decide about a given candidate or campaign.

And Mr. Trump himself is tugged in countless different directions, responding to advisers and lawmakers who have competing agendas.

“Republicans are going to have to all get on the same page,” said Josh Holmes, Mr. McConnell’s top political lieutenant. “If we go into a midterm and the Steve Bannons are successful at dividing the Republican Party before we even get to the general election, it’s going to be a disaster,” he continued, referring to the president’s former chief strategist.

Mr. Bannon still relays his thoughts to Mr. Trump and publicly encouraged him to rally to Mr. Moore’s side. But Mr. Trump has also spurned Mr. Bannon’s entreaties to oppose a handful of Senate Republican incumbents. Indeed, the president seems to delight in demonstrating that he is beholden to no one person or faction.

He told almost nobody that he planned to tweet Monday in support of Mr. Moore. And in an effort to be prepared, aides were still discussing the possibility of Mr. Trump going to Alabama before the election next Tuesday. This week, he plans to hold a rally in Pensacola, Fla., just over the border from Alabama.

In Mr. Trump’s view, he has previously followed the advice of congressional Republicans only to find himself burned, White House aides say. The president threw his support behind Senator Luther Strange, the Republican appointee filling the Alabama seat of Attorney General Jeff Sessions, simply to see Mr. Strange lose by more than nine percentage points to Mr. Moore in a runoff.

Mr. McConnell’s political operation has little credibility with the president, those aides say.

And internally, Mr. Trump has no political official on his staff whom he instinctually trusts in the fashion of past presidents.

A White House official said Bill Stepien, the White House political director, was on daily calls with the Republican National Committee. On Tuesday, the president; the vice president; John F. Kelly, the White House chief of staff; Rick Dearborn, a deputy chief of staff; and Mr. Stepien met in the Oval Office to discuss the 2018 landscape in detail, the official said. An extensive focus was on the Senate races, including in states like Arizona and Missouri. The official said the party committee, which provided Mr. Trump with the bulk of his resources during his general election campaign, had 200 staff members in 20 states.

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Still, Mr. Stepien has been seen as hobbled by others internally for months, aides also say. He is considered beholden to Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, who has drawn scrutiny by congressional investigators and the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III. Mr. Stepien has little experience at this level of politics and is not seen as somebody who can steer Mr. Trump.

Mr. Kelly, for his part, is a career military man and is open about his own lack of political experience.

And a chorus of voices are encouraging Mr. Trump to define himself as apart from other Republicans rather than leading them into the midterms.

“He can either wear the inaction of the Republican Congress and be part of it or he can attack it,” said Roger J. Stone Jr., Mr. Trump’s longest-serving political adviser.

The nature of politics is so fast now, Mr. Stone said, that “who’s in the chair when the music stops” matters more than planning.

Mr. Trump has been a significant draw for the Republican National Committee and is fond of Ronna Romney McDaniel, the party chairwoman, according to two people close to the White House. She has plied Mr. Trump with data from the committee’s polling, assuring him that he is doing better than public surveys suggest. And a White House official said the president chose to let the party committee decide how to distribute money to other groups.

Yet the president does not completely understand his role as a principal, Republicans say, and his political operation does not have enough sway with him to make him fully grasp that he is the leader of the Republican Party.

For example, he is still telling his friends who attend high-dollar committee fund-raisers that they do not need to pay, the sort of favoritism that can create endless headaches for staff.

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In two governor’s races, in New Jersey and Virginia, this year, the candidates and their top advisers up through Election Day were uncertain what Mr. Trump might say about the elections. When Mr. Trump tweeted about an ad run by Ed Gillespie, the Republican candidate for governor in Virginia, it was because he had just seen it broadcast on a Washington TV station.

“You can’t plan for him, you can only survive him,” said J. Tucker Martin, who was an adviser to Mr. Gillespie.

There have been some intermittent efforts at creating more of a cohesive approach, and party officials say they intend to restart regular planning meetings with the White House, the Republican National Committee and congressional campaign strategists.

But even that is a far cry from the top-down approach of past presidents, Democratic or Republican. Under President George W. Bush, for instance, there was a weekly Tuesday meeting at the Republican National Committee of the top aides at the White House, national party and congressional campaign committees.

“This is completely unchartered territory,” said Terry Nelson, a top aide in Mr. Bush’s re-election.

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Under Olympic flag, Russia can win medals

MOSCOW (AP) — The International Olympic Committee has barred the Russian team from competing in Pyeongchang in February over widespread doping at the last edition of the Winter Games in 2014.

However, they will be allowed to compete as “Olympic Athletes from Russia” under the Olympic flag. Gold medalists won’t hear the Russian anthem played on the podium.

The IOC says the OAR team will be invitation-only, picked by a panel of anti-doping and medical officials from various organizations.

To be invited, Russian athletes must meet the usual Olympic qualifying standards but also “be considered clean to the satisfaction of the panel,” meaning they can’t have been previously banned for doping and must face extensive pre-Games drug testing.

It’s not yet clear if Russian athletes plan to challenge these requirements in court. An IOC attempt to bar Russians with previous doping bans from last year’s Summer Olympics was overturned at the Court of Arbitration for Sport.

Under the current IOC rules, here’s a look at how “Olympic Athletes from Russia” might fare in Pyeongchang:

HOCKEY

Russians have won men’s hockey gold under the Olympic flag before.

Back in 1992, shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union, players from ex-Soviet countries teamed up, including future Stanley Cup winners Alexei Kovalev and Sergei Zubov. It wasn’t a punishment but political expediency in a chaotic political situation.

This time around, Russia’s neutrals would have a good shot at gold, in the absence of NHL players. Former NHL star Ilya Kovalchuk, now playing in Russia’s Kontinental Hockey League, is keen to play. “We definitely have to go,” he told Russian media after the IOC decision.

One obstacle could be KHL leadership, which previously threatened it might pull its players if Russia was punished over doping.

Russia’s women’s hockey team might be a contender for bronze but struggles to compete against the top two squads, the U.S. and Canada. Some women’s players have also been accused of doping offenses related to tampering with their 2014 Olympic samples, so eligibility is an issue.

FIGURE SKATING

Russia sent just one athlete to appeal to the IOC board on Tuesday, 18-year-old skating prodigy Evgenia Medvedeva.

It’s easy to see why. Unbeaten in two years, Medvedeva is the clear favorite for women’s skating gold and in a sport where careers are short, “I don’t know if I’ll have another Games in my life after Pyeongchang,” she told the board.

She’s also not connected to any doping offenses from 2014, when she was just 14.

If Medvedeva goes to February’s Olympics, she’d be joined by potential Russian medalists like pairs skaters Evgenia Tarasova and Vladimir Morozov.

ALPINE SKIING

Russia has never been an Alpine skiing power, but might have an outside shot at a medal under the Olympic flag.

Slalom specialist Alexander Khoroshilov in 2015 became the only Russian skier to win a World Cup event since 1981, when Russians still competed as part of the Soviet Union.

Three podiums last season show he could threaten the top three in Pyeongchang under the right conditions. Khoroshilov is based in Switzerland.

CROSS-COUNTRY SKIING

Key Russian skiers from the 2014 Olympics have already been banned by the IOC for doping, with four of Russia’s five medals stripped.

Of the three Russian skiers who swept the podium in the 50-kilometer race on the final day in Sochi, the only one left is bronze medalist Ilya Chernousov, who now faces a possible upgrade to gold subject to IOC confirmation.

Still, a new generation of athletes could challenge for gold in Pyeongchang, led by Sergei Ustyugov, who won five medals at this year’s world championships. IOC bans on skiers from Sochi will weaken Russia’s strength in depth for relay events, which make up one-third of the program.

BIATHLON

Under the IOC criteria, Russia should be able to field nearly a full team in biathlon, the country’s most-watched winter sport.

Russia has been stripped of two medals from the Sochi Olympics, with three of the women’s relay team banned, but the athletes concerned had already retired.

Seven-time world championship medalist Anton Shipulin could be the key medal contender for Russia, though he’s started the new season slowly.

IOC rules could block Alexander Loginov, who returned from a two-year doping ban last season to win a world championship relay bronze.

BOBSLEIGH

Individual doping bans from the IOC have already devastated Russian medal hopes in the bobsleigh and stripped the country of two gold medals won in Sochi.

Russia’s sleds were already depleted by retirements since Sochi, even before the top Russian pilot in the two-man and four-man events, Alexander Kasyanov, was handed an IOC lifetime Olympic ban earlier this month.

In a detail unlikely to impress the IOC, a former athlete banned in the Sochi doping investigation, Alexander Zubkov, is now in charge of the Russian Bobsled Federation and will oversee athletes’ preparation.

SKELETON

Russia had been counting on Sochi gold medalist Alexander Tretyakov and bronze medalist Elena Nikitina to repeat their success in Pyeongchang, but both were banned by the IOC earlier this month.

The top Russian with hopes of competing as a neutral is Nikita Tregubov, who won a silver medal in a World Cup race Nov. 25 and dedicated it to his banned teammates.

On the women’s side, medal hopes appear remote.

SPEEDSKATING

The IOC’s rules on previous doping bans could rule out Russian skating star Denis Yuskov for a sanction he received after testing positive for marijuana in 2008, even though it’s not a performance-enhancing substance.

Tuesday’s ruling opens the way for six-time Olympic short-track champion Viktor Ahn to return to South Korea and contend for more medals.

Previously known as Ahn Hyun-soo, he switched allegiance to Russia after failing to make the South Korean team for the 2010 Winter Olympics, and his return in Pyeongchang will be hotly anticipated, regardless of which flag he competes under.

Women’s skater Olga Fatkulina is ruled out after the IOC stripped her of her silver medal in the 500 meters from the Sochi Olympics earlier this month and banned her for life from the Games.

SNOWBOARD

Two of Russia’s gold medalists from the Sochi Olympics, the slalom snowboarders and married couple Vic Wild and Alyona Zavarzina, could make a return as neutrals, though they’ve yet to comment on the IOC decision.

Medals are potentially possible in other disciplines such as big air or snowboard cross.

OTHER SPORTS

There could be outside medal chances for “Olympic Athletes from Russia” in freestyle skiing, luge and women’s curling.

Whether or not they compete under their own flag, ski jumping and Nordic combined seem unlikely to result in any medals for Russians.

Copyright 2017 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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