- Banned
- #21
What a bunch of blowhard bullshitSooner or later this was bound to happen. Republican women politicians, news anchors and others--step up to the plate and call out the misogyny & hypocrisy of those who are still supporting & defending Trump. They're going to win this one.
“If Trump’s goal was to help Hillary win and undermine the foundation of the Republican Party, it’s hard to think of what he’d be doing differently,” said Sarah Isgur Flores, former deputy campaign manager for Carly Fiorina.
“No woman needs Donald Trump’s assessment of their beauty and worth,” said Mindy Finn, a GOP strategist and Evan McMullin’s running mate. She added, “If [Trump] is not discredited, in a full-throated way, by every Republican with credibility, it will send the party into a tailspin for decades.” . . .
On Fox News Friday afternoon, Dana Perino tore into high-profile conservatives defending Trump, like Ben Carson and Jeff Sessions. “You know who you are,” she said, prompting some of her co-hosts to joke that her mic might get cut.
“Yeah,” Perino snapped, “because women should be seen and not heard, apparently. After 20 years of defending these guys, [I’m] done.”
She is in good company. Women like Marybeth Glenn, Amanda Carpenter, S.E. Cupp, and Liz Mair have all denounced Trump. The president of the Iowa Federation of Republican Women resigned her post over Trump. Female governors like Susana Martinez of New Mexico and Nikki Haley of South Carolina as well as major donors like Meg Whitman have been stalwart critics of Trump. Carly Fiorina took on Trump during the primary and never made the mistake of endorsing him.
Democrats for years have thrown around the term “war against women,” which was premised on the notion that staunch opposition to abortion and to the liberal welfare state make one insensitive or hostile to women’s concerns. It was a phony label that capable Republicans like Sen. Cory Gardener (R-Colo.) easily batted down.
Now the real war on women is on, but women are fighting back. Trump’s record over decades in demeaning, mistreating and insulting women was well known before the party nominated him. Not only the vocal apologists but party regulars, talk radio hosts (long a source of misogynistic smirking as evidenced by Rush Limbaugh’s attack on Sandra Fluke as a “slut”) and a whole slew of elected Republicans dismiss the women’s allegations out of hand. Indiana Gov. Mike Pence is now part of the feeble spin factory, touting crazy theories and presenting ludicrous figures in an effort to debunk the women’s claims. From Reince Priebus to evangelical leaders the Republican establishment has refused to do the honorable thing, namely break with Trump and deplore thuggish treatment of women. Now they are engaged — as James Carville once described it — in the effort to portray the women as “nuts and sluts.” So much for family values.
Unlike their male counterparts, scores of elected women Republicans are in open revolt, as Five ThirtyEight pointed out last week:
Republican women have been far more likely to rally against Trump than the party’s men: 42 percent of all Republican women serving in Congress or as governor have now stated that they do not support Trump, versus just 17 percent of the men. . . .
In the U.S. House, 32 percent of Republican women are now opposed to Trump, compared to only 13 percent of Republican men. Rep. Kay Granger, the only Republican woman to have ever been elected to a full term in the U.S. House from Texas, is among the highest-profile defections.
Although Sen. Deb Fischer (R-Neb.) flip-flopped on whether Trump should leave the race, four of the six female GOP senators have pulled their support.
Among voters, women are abandoning Trump in record numbers. According to a recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll Clinton holds a 20-point lead among female voters (55 percent to 35 percent). According to CBS’s battleground state poll, “Last month the women’s vote in these key states was five points more for Clinton; today it is 15 points in Clinton’s favor – accounting for most of the swing, overall – and it even outweighs partisanship. Trump was at 84 percent among Republican women then, and has dropped to 77 percent today.”
If the GOP is going to be fumigated or replaced by a party free of Trump’s taint it may be GOP women — together with both male and female millennials — who lead the way. Evan McMullin, the 40-yr.-old independent conservative candidate, wrote on Oct. 10:
Many women may divorce the GOP
