Top Republican Paul Ryan shies away from Donald Trump

The Republican Party plunged deeper into internal crisis yesterday after party leader Paul Ryan declared he could no longer defend Donald Trump, just hours after a vicious second presidential debate.

The reverberations from a leaked 2005 tape in which the Republican candidate boasted about groping women and kissing them without their consent continued to ripple through the party as Mr Trump brushed off the remarks as “locker-room talk” in the debate and embarked on more aggressive attacks on Democratic rival Hillary Clinton.

During the debate, one of the nastiest ever held, Mr Trump called Mrs Clinton a liar and “the devil,” and attacked her and her husband, Bill Clinton, over unsubstantiated accusations of sexual harassment and assault made against the former president by three women who were guests of Mr Trump’s at the debate.

Mr Ryan, the party’s highest-elected official and speaker of the House of Representatives, told Republicans he would not campaign for the party’s presidential candidate and would instead concentrate on trying to retain the party’s majorities in Congress. The Wisconsin representative stopped short of rescinding his endorsement of Mr Trump, though he has all but abandoned the businessman, dealing his candidacy a devastating blow with just 28 days to the election.

“You all need to do what’s best for you in your district,” Mr Ryan reportedly told a House Republican.

Personal attack

“The speaker is going to spend the next month focused entirely on protecting our congressional majorities,” said Mr Ryan’s spokeswoman AshLee Strong.

Mr Trump answered with a typically personal attack, questioning the Republican leader’s record on Capitol Hill in a tweet: “Paul Ryan should spend more time on balancing the budget, jobs and illegal immigration and not waste his time on fighting Republican nominee.”

The extent of the challenge facing Mr Trump in the wake of his taped comments became clear in a new opinion poll showing Mrs Clinton surging into a double-digit lead over the Republican.

The NBC News/Wall Street Journal survey showed the Democrat polling at 46 per cent support among likely voters, compared to 35 per cent for Mr Trump in a four-way race with Libertarian Party nominee Gary Johnson and Green Party candidate Jill Stein. In a two-way, her lead stretches to a 14-point margin.

Gripped by a historic crisis over the property magnate’s boasts about groping women, dozens of Republicans have distanced themselves from him, fearing the Republican nominee could affect candidates appearing down the ballot.