The Summer of Donald Trump: The Biggest Winners and Losers

— -- Since the dramatic escalator ride that marked Donald Trump’s official entrance into the 2016 presidential contest in June, the real estate mogul has broken just about every strategy in the campaign rule book and defied political logic on his way to dominate both the conversation and the polls in the Republican presidential primary.

Trump’s reign has become the new normal and the Republican field has been forced to adjust accordingly.

While many candidates have gone head to head with Trump in an apparent attempt to draw attention to their own campaigns, others have taken the approach of channeling their own inner Trump, while still others have sought to lay low and ride out the summer under the radar.

An ABC News analysis of the various strategies used by other candidates in coping with Trump’s rise and how the candidates poll numbers have fared both nationally (comparing Monmouth University’s June 15 and Sept. 3 polls) and in Iowa (comparing the Des Moines Register’s May 30 and Aug. 29 polls) indicate that the political heatwave that is Donald Trump has rendered more clear losers than it has winners.

The Losers

Perhaps no one has wilted more under the summer of Trump than Scott Walker.

Less than two months after entering the presidential contest as the Iowa frontrunner, Walker has seen his poll numbers drop following a lackluster performance in the first Republican debate that was exaggerated by Trump's larger-than-life stage presence.

In June, Walker was the comfortable frontrunner in a Des Moines Register poll that placed him at 17 percent. But by the end of August, Walker fell 10 points to land at 7 percent. His national poll numbers have also dropped significantly. The latest Monmouth University poll had him at 3 percent, down 7 points from 10 percent in mid-June.

Since losing his once-solid footing in the polls, Walker has been talking up his own outsider image and has sought to connect with the voters who have flocked to Trump expressing shared frustration with Washington. He has even introduced some Trump-like language into his rhetoric, now with a new promise to “wreak havoc” on Washington if he’s elected president.

Walker has also stumbled in clearly articulating his established positions on immigration after Trump rolled out his plan to build a wall along the Mexican border and end birthright citizenship. Walker at first seemed to echo Trump in expressing support for ending birthright citizenship for the children of illegal immigrants during an impromptu interview with MSNBC at the Iowa State Fair last month. He then walked the position back over the course of the week -- taking a total of three positions –- before concluding to ABC News' George Stephanopoulos that “no,” he isn’t calling for a constitutional amendment to end birthright citizenship.

While Walker has fallen short in his strategy of partially embracing Trump's rise, those who have spent their summer picking fights with the frontrunner have also failed to break through.

Rand Paul, Rick Perry and Lindsey Graham all began the summer near the bottom of the polls and have only fallen further since.

Perry has slammed Trump as a “cancer” to conservativism, Graham has threatened that he’d “beat his brains out,” and Paul has mocked him as a “fake conservative.”

But their attacks have been unanimously ineffective in bring attention to their own candidacies.