A rough day for Hillary Clinton sends a wave of regret through the GOP

WASHINGTON — As Republican strategist Brian Walsh watched the nonstop cable news coverage Tuesday from his K Street office, he thought he was seeing the stuff of his party's dreams.

A week after former President Bill Clinton lit a political firestorm by strolling onto Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch's plane for a private conversation, the director of the FBI announced that the bureau would not recommend criminal charges over Hillary Clinton's handling of classified information. And then, just three hours later, President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton emerged arm in arm from Air Force One in North Carolina for their first joint campaign rally.

But this politically pregnant convergence of events was not met with a battalion of well-credentialed Republican law enforcement and national security officials flooding the television airwaves to raise questions about the inquiry and hammer Clinton. Nor was there any made-for-social-media video contrasting what the FBI director, James B. Comey, called Clinton's "extremely careless" handling of 110 classified emails with the former secretary of state's shifting explanations over the last year about her use of a private email server.

There were not even any talking points sent to leading Republican members of Congress offering guidance on the best lines of attack against Clinton in the aftermath of what was a remarkably harsh assessment of her conduct.

"Instead we're relying on somebody who's tweeting with exclamation points," said Walsh, referring to Donald Trump's initial response to Comey's news conference.

Trump's improvisational response to the conclusion of an FBI investigation against his opponent that had been months in the making illustrated the lingering deficiencies of his skeletal campaign and the lack of high-profile Republicans with foreign policy experience who are willing to speak on his behalf.

[Even without charges, FBI rebuke leaves a heavy political cloud over Clinton]

For many in the party it also was a painful reminder of what could have been — how a different standard-bearer could have capitalized on one of the most difficult days Clinton has faced as a candidate. For the Republican establishment, the months since Trump began closing in on the presidential nomination have been a season of dismay and frustration: Handed a historically weak Democratic opponent to run against, the party's voters responded by nominating a candidate even more unpopular and toxic than Clinton.

But there have been few days during this cycle of disbelief in which the sense of regret has been as palpable for Republican strategists and policymakers as when Comey jolted the political world back to life after a long holiday weekend.

"Imagine Jeb Bush looking disappointed and talking about the importance of following the rules and a society ruled by law with a government that is held accountable," said Kori Schake, a fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution and a national security aide in George W. Bush's administration who is now backing Clinton. "This should be a really great moment for a Republican nominee. But there's no way in the world Donald Trump could pull that off."

Trump's campaign did, in fact, issue a longer statement regarding Clinton's email use beyond his initial assessment of "very very unfair!" and he used his own rally Tuesday night in North Carolina to assail his Democratic rival. "We are talking about the safety of our people," he told a crowd in Raleigh. "The laws are very explicit. Stupidity is not a reason that you're going to be innocent."

[How the FBI director systematically dismantled Hillary Clinton's email defense]

Yet for many in his own party, there was deep angst over the possibility that they could lose to a Democratic candidate who was just deemed by one of the country's most highly respected law enforcement officials to have presided over a State Department whose lackadaisical security culture invited foreign hackers.

"He's making somebody who should be sitting in a jail cell look like the sane choice for president," said John Noonan, a former Air Force officer who served as a national security aide to Mitt Romney in 2012 and in Jeb Bush's campaign this year. "This should have been a two-foot putt. But Republicans never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. And that's what we've done."

What was especially exasperating to so many in the party was that the turn of events over the last week was only the latest opportunity in a month for Trump to go on the offensive. The Islamic State-inspired rampage in Orlando, Florida, and Britain's vote to leave the European Union offered him prime political moments, but he unnecessarily inserted himself into each story and saw no improvement in his standing in the polls.

"Trump overtakes news cycles at every turn," complained Walsh. "My God, he was on his golf course saying what a good thing the pound's collapse would be for his bottom line." (Some Republicans feared Trump was again frittering away an opportunity when, rather than focusing entirely on the FBI probe, he used his speech Tuesday night to offer praise for Saddam Hussein.)

[FBI's critique of Hillary Clinton is a ready-made attack ad]

However, in a campaign year animated by a voter revolt against Washington and the perceived self-dealing of an all-too-cozy political class, there may be no more of a gift than what Comey delivered to an outsider candidate like Trump, whose jeremiads against what he calls a "rigged" system have been central to his improbable rise.

"This is an example of what voters are totally fed up with," said Liesl Hickey, the former executive director of the House Republican campaign arm, alluding to the FBI's decision to not recommend charges.

But Hickey, pointing out that Trump refuses to release his income tax returns, noted that the candidate also bore his own baggage on the very argument he is making against Clinton.

"Americans also think the system is rigged for the top 1 percent, so they think the system could be rigged for him, too," she said.

Whether it is with his taxes, his pronouncements or his willingness to raise money and create a sophisticated organization, Trump has gleefully flouted convention.

"He doesn't think traditional campaigns matter as much anymore, that he can do this on social media," said Jim Merrill, a New Hampshire-based Republican strategist. "But the truth is, running a campaign still matters a great deal. And if we had nominated anyone else we'd be up on Hillary. But we're down because we've got an incompetent candidate who has alienated large swaths of the electorate."

For his part, Walsh was just flabbergasted that his party had a nominee whose war room often seems to begin and end with the candidate's Twitter feed.

"Why would he rush out a tweet as his primary response?" wondered Walsh. "He's just demonstrating he is unable or unwilling to appear presidential at moments like this, when it's required."