Trump was already trailing big in the polls after the first debate. Then this sleeze tape. He is in full meltdown mode.
What could RNC do?
Dream Delirious Dreams? There is some general talk about dumping Trump officially. He can not be dropped from the ballots. Too late for that. The idea seems to be for GOP to win the White House with a Trump/Pence ticket, and then Pence would declare Trump to be incompetent and unfit for office. Under Amendment 25, there is a provision for such a succession. It needs to be ratified by the House. Not sure if Senate also has to agree. Anyway the idea is for Pence to officially declare this intention, RNC to pledge support for this action, campaign on it and win the White House. Did I say it was a dream? making sure. Well, this is from the same clueless idiots who gave us “Trump will not win primaries”, “His collapse is just round the corner”, “He won, but we can coup-de-etat him in the convention” … GOP. So they are dreaming of this scenario in their delirium.
Realistic course? Trump has no field organization, and he is depending on RNC. RNC could officially decide to cede the White House race. Switch to “Bad Hillary is definitely going to be the POTUS, please vote for us, we promise to impeach her before she even takes office” mode. Saving the House and keeping as many Senate seats as possible is the best they can salvage out of this bad situation. This seems to be most plausible scenario for them to follow. The endangered incumbents are more interested in saving their tails, and their cushy seats. If Trump provides leg irons instead of coat tails, they will dump him in a heartbeat.
Trumpster party poopers. The sticky point for them is how to get the enraged Trump supporters over if they officially dump Trump. This has been the quandary they have been in, ever since the dog-and-pony show started with 18 dogs and no ponies 18 months ago. The deplorable part of Trump supporters are the deciding block of votes in the GOP primaries. They need to thread the needle of keeping them in the fold while opposing Trump. If Koch brothers or that Vegas casino don had decided to buy off Trump they might have succeeded. This sleezeball would have come up with some sort of buy-out plan. Probably they overestimated to cost. Back in the primaries, it looked like he would ask for a billion. Looking at his finances now, he might have settled for 200 million. Invest in one of his projects and let him strip it of assets, and let the project go bankrupt. They could even extract some tax benefits by letting it go bankrupt. Well, it is all water under the George Washington bridge now.
Gerrymandering becomes Dummymandering? If this had a month or two ago they would have had the time organize the switch. If they stick it to Trump now, they are likely to lose the non-college-white demographic completely. Without it they are sunk. Also this is the time gerry mandering they did could come back to bite them in their tail. All the Redmapping is done based on certain turn out models and certain voting patterns they assumed. If a fundamental shift happens, all their carefully constructed 15% to 20% margins spread over all the Redmapped districts could be overwhelmed. It would be like levee overtopping. They will have unfair advantage as long as the shift is less than 15%. More than 15%, they would lose ALL the Redmapped seats!