Republicans fear Trump is playing into Clinton’s hands by lashing out on infidelity and impeachment [View all]

[Zorro]

The airwaves and newspaper headlines were filled with talk of infidelity and impeachment. When the votes were counted, the result was a shock: For only the second time since the Civil War, the president’s party had gained seats in the House of Representatives.

Republicans learned a lesson. “It was a huge blunder,” said Scott Reed, a GOP strategist, recalling the party’s 1998 midterm debacle and the sympathy the attacks on Bill Clinton engendered for the president and then-First Lady Hillary Clinton.

So it is inexplicable to Reed and many other Republicans that Donald Trump is seeking to recover from his stumbling debate performance by dredging up Bill Clinton’s womanizing and escalating his attacks on a former Miss Universe whose transgression, Trump suggests, was putting on a few pounds.

In a predawn barrage unleashed Friday on Twitter, Trump made an unsubstantiated charge that Alicia Machado, the 1996 pageant winner, had performed in a sex tape. He also asserted that Hillary Clinton helped Machado become a U.S. citizen just so the Democratic presidential nominee could cite the former beauty queen's past difficulties with Trump in an attack during Monday night’s debate.

http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-trump-20160930-snap-htmlstory.html