The GOP will always be stuck with Trump -- even if he loses big in 2020: conservative columnist

Current polls show that President Donald Trump is still historically unpopular and CNN polling expert Harry Enten has found that the president is in a "historically bad" position for an incumbent facing reelection in just over a year.

The conventional wisdom is that the Republican Party will quickly try to move on from Trump's presidency should he go down in defeat next year -- but Washington Examiner columnist Philip Klein makes a compelling case that the GOP will not be able to wash their hands of Trump no matter how hard they try.

The reason for this, argues Klein, is that Trump will simply refuse to go away.

"Trump was an active Twitter user before running for president, throughout his campaign, and during his presidency," he writes. "He has used the forum to generate controversy and lambaste his critics. There is no reason to believe that will stop when he leaves office and every reason to believe that with more time on his hands and fewer constraints, he’ll feel even more freedom to let it rip to his tens of millions of followers."

Even more ominously for the party, writes Klein, is that Trump's angry tweets may continue to haunt them for decades to come.

"Trump is 73 years old -- his mother lived until 88 and his father until 93," he writes. "It’s quite possible that he could be tweeting for a very long time."

Klein concludes that Republican officials will likely continue cowering in fear of the president's mean tweets for the foreseeable future.

"Future Republican candidates may not covet Trump’s endorsement, but they certainly will fear his anti-endorsement," he writes. "This will likely limit the extent to which they will be willing to distance themselves from Trump, and that could shape the direction of the party."

Read the whole column here.