First Read: Can the GOP Really Sink Trump?

 

By Chuck Todd, Mark Murray and Carrie Dann

First Read is a morning briefing from Meet the Press and the NBC Political Unit on the day's most important political stories and why they matter.

 

Can the GOP really sink Donald Trump?

As Donald Trump leads yet another national poll, the New York Times' Jonathan Martin asks a question that has consumed the political world: Can anyone inside the Republican Party -- via negative TV ads or a scorched-earth campaign -- stop Trump? And if so, do they even have the will do it? "Almost everyone in the party's upper echelons agrees something must be done, and almost no one is willing to do it," Martin writes. (Where have we heard that one before? Sounds a lot like foreign policy in the Middle East, right?) But here is our follow-up question: Even if there's the will to take down Trump, can you do it when there is almost perfect information out there about him? After all, you can't say that Trump's background, claims, and positions have gone unchallenged over the past six months. And he has perfect name identification in our NBC/WSJ polls: All Americans know who he is. When past presidential insurgents have failed -- see Howard Dean, Herman Cain, or Ben Carson (at least for now) -- it's been because voters get new information about them. But what new information stops Trump? And does it even exist? 

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Source: NBC News