As Donald Trump's presidential campaign begins airing television ads in Florida this week, a cavalcade of prominent GOP lawmakers and operatives are calling on the Republican National Committee to stop funneling Trump the money that's helping fuel the ad blitz.

  • Trump trails Clinton in Florida ad spending eight-to-one
  • Anti-Trump Republicans fear "catastrophic impact"
  • Establishment wants spending to go to vulnerable congressional races

In an open letter to RNC Chairman Reince Priebus, the anti-Trump Republicans write that "Donald Trump’s divisiveness, recklessness, incompetence, and record-breaking unpopularity risk turning this election into a Democratic landslide."

They argue that only the immediate shift of all available RNC resources to vulnerable Senate and House races will prevent the GOP from "drowning with a Trump-emblazoned anchor around its neck."

Trump trails Democratic rival Hillary Clinton eight-to-one in Florida ad spending. His campaign's lackluster fundraising has made the infusion of cash from the RNC especially critical to efforts to close the gap, but the writing is already on the wall, according to the letter.

Unless the committee's Trump funding is diverted to Republicans in toss-up congressional races -- including the one in which Sen. Marco Rubio is seeking re-election -- a "catastrophic impact" could result down ballot, the letter reads.

For all his unpopularity among establishment Republicans, however, Trump is now his party's de facto leader, having become its presidential nominee by winning more votes than any other candidate in GOP history.

Trump's sway over Priebus, in particular, is characterized by associates of both men as "commanding."

"All the Republican voters in the entire country, from Jeb Bush to H.W. Bush to W. Bush, can write as many letters as they want," said Florida political strategist Kevin Cate. "That doesn't mean anything, because Donald Trump controls the RNC right now and they're going to do his bidding, however crazy it may be."

Not that the letter's signatories aren't aware of the decades of tradition behind the RNC's allegiance to the Republican presidential nominee.

Admitting that "signing an appeal such as this is not easy for any of us," they're nonetheless hopeful that exceptional circumstances will lead to the undertaking of exceptional measures.