Trump Losing Support From Republican Women

It just keeps getting worse.

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Donald Trump’s campaign has reached the point where he is bleeding support from virtually every demographic group, but few seem to be causing as much consternation for his campaign as the loss of support among Republican women:

Of all the tribulations facing Donald J. Trump, perhaps none is stirring as much anxiety inside his campaign as the precipitous decline of support from Republican women, an electoral cornerstone for the party’s past nominees that is starting to crumble.

In a striking series of defections, high-profile Republican women are abandoning decades of party loyalty and vowing to oppose Mr. Trump, calling him emotionally unfit for the presidency and a menace to national security.

But even more powerfully, his support from regular Republican women is falling after Mr. Trump’s provocative remarks about everything from the silence of the mother of a slain Muslim soldier to how women should respond to sexual harassment in the workplace.

“For people like me, who are Republican but reasonable and still have our brains attached, it’s hard to see Trump as a reasonable, sane Republican,” said Dina Vela, a project manager in San Antonio who said she had always voted Republican and remained wary of Hillary Clinton. But to her own surprise, she has started visiting Mrs. Clinton’s campaign website and plans to vote for her.

Since the two parties held their nominating conventions, Mr. Trump’s lead over Mrs. Clinton with Republican women voters has declined by 13 percentage points, according to polls conducted by The New York Times and CBS News.

In late July, 72 percent of Republican women said they would vote for Mr. Trump, a healthy majority, but far below the level won by the past three Republican presidential nominees. In 2012, Mitt Romney won 93 percent of Republican women. In 2008, John McCain won 89 percent, and four years earlier, George W. Bush won 93 percent.

In politically moderate swing states like Pennsylvania, which aides to Mr. Trump say are crucial to his victory, Mr. Trump’s standing with women over all is perilously low among registered voters: Just 27 percent of women back him, compared with 58 percent for Mrs. Clinton, according to a poll by Franklin & Marshall College.

Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University, said that Mr. Trump’s divisive and combative tactics, which seem to have intensified since he secured the Republican nomination, were amplified in the eyes and ears of the nation’s female voters.

In an interview on Tuesday, Ms. Walsh cited a controversy Mr. Trump had set off just moments before, when he seemed to suggest that gun owners who care about the Second Amendment take action against Mrs. Clinton if she is elected. Democrats immediately denounced his remarks as a reckless invitation to his supporters to commit violence.

“That kind of rhetoric is inflammatory, and I think we are seeing that women in particular have a real problem with it,” Ms. Walsh said.

Alarm over Mr. Trump’s temperament crosses demographic lines. But decades of social science research about gender and politics suggests that women have a unique perspective on government and its leaders that frequently diverges from men’s — a view, Ms. Walsh said, grounded in their longer life expectancy, their lower pay and their expectation that government will play a meaningful role in their lives.

This dynamic, she said, is reflected in the number of women who vote. Four years ago, about 10 million more women voted than men, the Rutgers center found.

For Mrs. Clinton, the alienation of Republican women from Mr. Trump creates a rare opportunity to capture a coveted demographic. But it poses a dilemma as well.

Skeptical liberals are already looking for signs of betrayal from Mrs. Clinton, making it dangerous for her to make overt or ideological appeals to Republican women. Instead, she is making her case to them by emphasizing kitchen-table issues like job creation and by raising doubts about Mr. Trump’s temperament.

Tellingly, her campaign recently released a commercial in eight swing states aimed at mothers. The ad, which featured cross-legged children watching Mr. Trump’s most controversial statements on their home televisions, ominously asked: “Our children are watching. What example will we set for them?”

Democrats acknowledge that, in the end, Mr. Trump may repel Republican women as much as Mrs. Clinton attracts them.

“I really think it’s fueled by an anti-Trump vote,” said Tracy Sefl, a Democratic strategist. “But that’s fine with me, and I’m pretty sure that’s fine with the campaign.”

(…)

Mr. Trump draws his deepest support from white men, especially those without a college degree. But he has alienated a growing number of white women, especially those with college degrees, surveys have found. Mrs. Clinton is now leading in that demographic.

“What Trump is doing has never been done before: He is losing college-educated white women,” said Stuart Stevens, Mr. Romney’s chief strategist in 2012 and a critic of Mr. Trump’s campaign.

The danger for Mr. Trump is that the erosion could accelerate as leading Republican women publicly break with him, making an argument that the national interest must supersede party loyalty.

In what has turned into a steady drip, prominent Republican women from the worlds of business and politics have been publicly renouncing Mr. Trump over the past few weeks. Among them: Senator Susan Collins of Maine; Sally Bradshaw, a top aide and strategist to Jeb Bush when he was governor of Florida; and Maria Comella, a former top adviser to Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey.

“We’re Republicans, she’s a Democrat, but the policy disagreements we have are far outweighed by the danger that Donald Trump poses to America,” said Jennifer Pierotti Lim, a lifelong Republican and an executive at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce who has pledged her support to Mrs. Clinton and spoke at the Democratic National Convention.

After Meg Whitman, the chief executive of Hewlett Packard Enterprise and a prominent Republican fund-raiser, declared her allegiance to Mrs. Clinton and her disgust for Mr. Trump, her email inbox was flooded with messages of support — not from Democrats, but from fellow Republicans.

Trump’s campaign is at the point where he can hardly afford to lose support from any group at this point, of course, but the fact that Republican women, whether its prominent GOP donors and politicians like Meg Whitman and Susan Collins or ordinary women who have been reliable Republican voters in the past, are starting to repudiate him and either get behind Hillary Clinton or simply state that they will not be supporting him. In no small part this is because women are generally more likely to come to the polls than men, so a failure to garner sufficient support from Republican women arguably means more than whatever level of support Trump may have among men because every voter that stays home or votes for Clinton makes it that much harder for Trump to get the votes he needs to overcome what is looking more and more like a Clinton surge that may well become too large for Trump to overcome in the next 90-odd days before the General Election.

Going forward, if this defection of Republican women continues it could have a serious impact on the outcome of the election in several important states, and could cause Trump to lose states that Mitt Romney won rather easily four years ago, For example, in Virginia, which already appears as though it may be out of battleground status for this election in any case, would almost certainly seem to be out of Trump’s grasp if he has in fact lost significant support among suburban married women, a group that has tended to vote Republican in significant numbers in recent elections. Other states that would likely be at risk for Trump without more solid support from Republican women include Ohio, Florida, North Carolina, and Georgia, states where polls have indicated he is already in trouble. The fact that the most significant motivation for this loss of support among such an important demographic group seems to be Trump’s own mouth, the odds that he can repair the damage that he’s already created seem fairly low. Indeed, the best that his campaign can probably hope for is that he somehow able to stop the bleeding and go at least a week or two without saying things that cause people to denounce him and get turned off by his rhetoric. Of course, as we learned yesterday, that’s kind of like asking the sun not to rise in the morning. Expect this to get worse before it gets better.

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Doug Mataconis
About Doug Mataconis
Doug Mataconis held a B.A. in Political Science from Rutgers University and J.D. from George Mason University School of Law. He joined the staff of OTB in May 2010 and contributed a staggering 16,483 posts before his retirement in January 2020. He passed far too young in July 2021.

Comments

  1. CSK says:

    Quelle surprise. After all, there’s nothing, absolutely nothing, intelligent, educated, well-informed women like better in a presidential candidate than a deranged misogynist churl with the world view of flatworm.

  2. KM says:

    It’s interesting it’s dropping after watching Trump pick on a grieving mother and harass a young mom with her crying baby.

    Guess it really is true that empathy only kicks in for some when they connect the dots back to themselves. That’s could have been their child while they waited in the crowd he so rudely dismissed and turned them to national embarrassment. It could be their frozen grief he mocks for not speaking up. Everything else they could excuse but Republican women got a weeks worth of Trump metaphorically flipping motherhood the finger.

    It may not be enough to get them to vote Clinton but it’s enough to give them second thoughts about voting Trump.

  3. C. Clavin says:

    This has become about sane v. insane.
    Apparently Republican women are, by-and-large, sane.

  4. Eric Florack says:

    I’ve been saying it for almost a year now. The buyer’s remorse on this guy is going to be epic.

  5. Slugger says:

    When the Republican primary debates started, I found it hard to believe that the people who run the party would allow a large number of totally unfit people on the stage along with what I assumed were the genuine party candidates. They allowed it, and one of the unfit is the candidate now. Obviously, Reince Priebus must be dismissed and kept from any future role with the party. The party needs to start right now with a high level meeting of its important stakeholders to determine a future course that will lead to slates of responsible competent people. No more Palins, Carsons, Fiorinas, or Trumps. It is not the responsibility of the GOP to provide easy fodder for the writers of Saturday Night Live.
    We, Americans, are stuck with a two party system as a result of the constitutional framework we have. We need both parties to recognize a sense of duty to all of us. To me this means inclusion of the 85% in the middle and telling the outlier extremists that they are unwelcome, and not using the undeniable energy that the outliers always have as a cudgel.

  6. Pete S says:

    @Slugger:

    When the Republican primary debates started, I found it hard to believe that the people who run the party would allow a large number of totally unfit people on the stage along with what I assumed were the genuine party candidates.

    But which ones were fit? There was a large group of unfit candidates on the stage because the Republican voters who are really engaged at the primary stage won’t accept a fit candidate. Bush, Kasich and Walker all were pushing “ideas” that are well outside of the political middle you are talking about. Republican primary voters won’t stand for candidates that “85% in the middle” would consider fit. Prebus is not an innocent bystander by any means but this process started long before he took this job.

  7. Lit3Bolt says:

    @Slugger:

    The problem is Republican has become synonomous with rube.

  8. Tillman says:

    Democrats immediately denounced his remarks as a reckless invitation to his supporters to commit violence.

    “That kind of rhetoric is inflammatory, and I think we are seeing that women in particular have a real problem with it,” Ms. Walsh said.

    I don’t know why it is. Try to point out Trump’s pseudofascism to a majority of my white male friends, you get dismissed. Offer to loan books on fascism to them, share links (endless links!) documenting the behavior, and you get a haughty bromide about your incivility.

    Maybe it’s a visceral loathing of Hillary Clinton? But I know women my age, in roughly equal numbers, who loathe her, voted against her in the primary, but are willing to vote for her in the general over Trump. So is it subconscious sexism?

    @KM:

    harass a young mom with her crying baby

    This is literally the one thing my liberal mother agrees with Trump on. To her it is the height of impropriety as a mother to bring a baby to a public speaking venue or a movie theater or similar.

    She was at pains to emphasize this is the one thing she agrees with him on.

  9. CSK says:

    @Eric Florack:

    I’m not so sure about the buyer’s remorse–at least, not on the part of the Trumpkins. If he loses in an epic landslide, they’ll say the election was rigged. Trump has already told them it will be rigged, and of course they believe that. They’ll be very, very angry, and I think there’s a strong likelihood that Trump will encourage them to commit violence. And then, of course, deny that he did so.

    But buyer’s remorse? No. Even if he won, and repudiated all of his promises, they’d find some way to excuse him; they have far too much invested in him emotionally to do otherwise. And don’t forget that the Trumpkins not only identify with him; they’ve actually merged their identities with his, just as they did with his predecessor in demented incoherence, Sarah Palin.

    The Trump “phenomenon” is not about ideology; it’s about rage and vengeance.

  10. CSK says:

    @Lit3Bolt:

    Indeed. Rubepublican.

  11. grumpy realist says:

    @Eric Florack: Maybe buyer’s remorse on the part of Paul Ryan and the Establishment Republicans, but I doubt for anyone else of Trump’s Chumps.

    They WANT to be fooled. Hell, if Trump were elected POTUS with all the related collapse of the country that would undoubtedly occur, there still wouldn’t blame Trump. It would be the fault of “them gays.” Or “them messicans.” or “them feminazis.” Or them Nee-grows. Or them Moo-slims….

    Anyone, in fact, to shove the blame off on. Someone who “wasn’t them”.

  12. CSK says:

    @grumpy realist:

    Actually, a lot of them would be quite pleased to see the country go down in flames. They’ve said so: “We want blood in the street!” (This is not a metaphorical cry, I assure you.) They want to punish all the rest of us–Democrats, Republicans, doesn’t matter–for what they feel has been done to them. They hate Paul Ryan more than they hate Barack Obama.

  13. James Pearce says:

    @Tillman:

    To her it is the height of impropriety as a mother to bring a baby to a public speaking venue or a movie theater or similar.

    The more disturbing thing to me about the baby incident is Trump’s undetectable sarcasm. One minute he’s “Don’t worry, I love babies” and the next he’s “I think she really believed me that I like crying babies.”

    I can totally see Trump saying “I pardon you” to the kid who couldn’t get the stains out of the bathtub…..

  14. C. Clavin says:

    @Eric Florack:
    Let’s all keep in mind that Florack’s problem with Trump is that he is not nearly racist enough.
    Florack makes bill look like a card-carrying member of the Rainbow Coalition.

  15. JohnMcC says:

    @Slugger: You have forgotten perhaps that the R-party was overwhelmed with joy because of their “deep bench”?

  16. JohnMcC says:

    @Eric Florack: Really? You expect Limbaugh or Hannity to do ‘remorse’? Drop in over at RedState and look for any sign of soul-searching over the tone or positions that so-called-conservatives have adopted for the past decade or so and how they might — just MIGHT — have contributed to this hot mess. You will look in vain. It is all someone else’s fault. One theory they generally all seem to agree on is that liberal Democrats voted in Republican primaries for Mr Trump in order to bring this about. I am not making that up. They believe that they will protect themselves in the future by only having closed primaries. As in, no liberal Democrat with such an evil intent will know how to register as a Republican.

    They are all that stupid.

  17. grumpy realist says:

    Now even Cosmo is running articles taking down Trump.

    Wow.

  18. OzarkHillbilly says:

    Expect this to get worse before it gets better.

    Doug, I think your optimism is misplaced.

  19. Scott says:

    I don’t what took people so long. Regardless of actual policies and ideas (of which there are few coherent ones), it is obvious from the earliest debates that Trump was a classless pig. I guess character was on the low end of priorities for Republican women. Who knows why although we can speculate on the relative self esteem of such women.

  20. Blue Galangal says:

    Tellingly, her campaign recently released a commercial in eight swing states aimed at mothers. The ad, which featured cross-legged children watching Mr. Trump’s most controversial statements on their home televisions, ominously asked: “Our children are watching. What example will we set for them?”

    Not just mothers; this particular campaign commercial is being shared among my college-aged daughter’s FB friends. It’s a very powerful commercial, and for as little as my household watches live TV programming, we’ve seen it ~7 times so far (including during the premiere of 2 Lava 2 Lantula), which tells me it was quite an ad buy.

  21. MikeSJ says:

    I’ve thought that the parties should require the release of ten years of full tax returns as a prerequisite to being allowed on stage.

    This would eliminate most of the clowns/jokers/grifters from the get go.

    Obviously Trump would have been eliminated from consideration. I think the Democratic side should do the same. I’m still not sure if Bernie not releasing his taxes as promised is due to stubbornness, incompetence or malfeasance of some sort.

  22. Eric Florack says:

    @C. Clavin: you know you really are a moron.

  23. Rafer Janders says:

    @Blue Galangal:

    Not just mothers; this particular campaign commercial is being shared among my college-aged daughter’s FB friends. It’s a very powerful commercial, and for as little as my household watches live TV programming, we’ve seen it ~7 times so far (including during the premiere of 2 Lava 2 Lantula), which tells me it was quite an ad buy.

    Friend of mine made that commercial. I’m very proud of her. (And of the whole team, it was an all-women crew which produced, shot and edited the piece).

  24. Eric Florack says:

    @C. Clavin: you know you really are a moron.@CSK: Durango suggests that unity in the Republican party which is not nearly what’s going on. The fact of the matter is that there is one thing and one thing alone that they Trump phenomenon can be blamed on. It is in fact the GOP establishments fear of being actually conservative

  25. Eric Florack says:

    @JohnMcC: In fairness it must be said that the tactic of crossing over and voting for the guy in the primary that you think will be the easiest to beat in the general is a known quantity. How else to explain John McCain for example?

  26. C. Clavin says:

    @Eric Florack:

    It is in fact the GOP establishments fear of being actually conservative

    By which he means far to the right of Pat Buchanan.
    Look – Florack can call me a moron all he wants…he is the one who has a website where you can search the “N” word and find dozens of entries.
    Uber-bigot.

  27. Just 'nutha ig'rant cracker says:

    @JohnMcC: I suspect the buyer’s remorse will be two fold: first, what ever caused us to believe that HE was actually a conservative, and second, that’s the last time we’ll ever let that bunch of ignorant buffoons take control of the primary process. In terms of remorse about what conservatives believe (and what Eric Florak holds true in whatever passes for a soul)? Not so much. Conservatism can only be failed.

  28. Just 'nutha ig'rant cracker says:

    @Just ‘nutha ig’rant cracker:

    The fact of the matter is that there is one thing and one thing alone that they Trump phenomenon can be blamed on. It is in fact the GOP establishments fear of being actually conservative

    I rest my case.

  29. Blue Galangal says:

    @Rafer Janders:

    Friend of mine made that commercial. I’m very proud of her. (And of the whole team, it was an all-women crew which produced, shot and edited the piece).

    That is awesome. She deserves all the accolades she can get. And those kids are about the cutest kids ever (big “awww” factor there). It’s powerful on a number of levels – it makes me, at least, stop and think, what ARE kids hearing today? What DO they think of this? Do they think this is normal? Do they think because Trump is on TV and saying that, that that makes what he says acceptable since it bears the imprimatur of some kind of bright-box authority?

    I remember after 9/11, after about two weeks of nonstop coverage, my young son came in and curled up next to me on the couch and we watched TV for a while in silence. And then he said, “I’m really sad.” And I had to stop and think: what was I showing my kid? He didn’t need to see this relentless – and at that point, hysterical – coverage. We switched to Nickelodeon. That probably is the moment that started my awareness of, and disaffection with, the 24 hr news cycle.

    In happier news, I’m just not seeing how it’s even a contest. Hillary’s t-shirts are made in America; her print orders and bumper stickers are coming from a union shop; and talented women are making some of her commercials. That is something no one is thinking or talking about and yet it is so powerful.

  30. MarkedMan says:

    @Slugger:

    When the Republican primary debates started, I found it hard to believe that the people who run the party would allow a large number of totally unfit people on the stage along with what I assumed were the genuine party candidates. They allowed it, and one of the unfit is the candidate now

    The failures of the party were pretty substantial. Oddly enough it was in an attempt to make it more democratic. In moving away from the smoke-filled room or brokered conventions of the past they let the pendulum swing too far.

    God help us if the Dem’s decide to cut out the super delegates. Pulling that trigger may very well cost their candidate the election but as Trump shows, there are fates worth than that.

  31. Thor thormussen says:

    @Slugger:

    Slugger says:
    Wednesday, August 10, 2016 at 11:50
    When the Republican primary debates started, I found it hard to believe that the people who run the party would allow a large number of totally unfit people on the stage along with what I assumed were the genuine party candidates.

    I think the primary problem is that republican voters are unfit to make decisions.

  32. Andrew says:

    When conservatism is synonymous 1950’s White Male entitlement.
    Anti-Women, Anti-Immigration, Anti-Colored people, Anti-Healthcare for all. Anti-Taxes.

    Conservatism isn’t exactly a mind set that anyone but White Men can get behind.
    In fact calling is Conservatism is very large joke. Not “Conservative” enough is a virtue in this 21st century, not a draw back.

    PS. I am a white male.

  33. James Pearce says:

    @Rafer Janders:

    (And of the whole team, it was an all-women crew which produced, shot and edited the piece).

    @Blue Galangal:

    talented women are making some of her commercials. That is something no one is thinking or talking about

    At the risk of being the resident misogynist/”white male privilege” defender and a buzzkill, we’ll know we’re making progress against sexism when it’s no longer considered appropriate to congratulate a filmmaker for being a woman.

  34. Tillman says:

    @James Pearce: Wasn’t that great though? That was a perfect moment. Here’s a dude praised by his devotees for speaking his mind, bluntly honest no matter how untactful, and he gaslights the mother for thinking he wasn’t sarcastic less than a minute later.

  35. Kylopod says:

    @Eric Florack:

    In fairness it must be said that the tactic of crossing over and voting for the guy in the primary that you think will be the easiest to beat in the general is a known quantity.

    But there is information to measure the phenomenon, and it has not shown what you’re implying. Exit polls indicate that Trump won among Republican voters alone, not just independents or Democrats. For example, here are the numbers among Republican voters in New Hampshire and South Carolina:

    NH:
    Trump: 36%
    Kasich: 13%
    Rubio: 12%
    Cruz: 12%

    SC:
    Trump: 32%
    Cruz: 24%
    Rubio: 23%

  36. SenyorDave says:

    The sad part is that once again there will only be a minimal discussion of policy in this election. Trump gave his vaunted economic speech this week, and you barely heard anything about it. As it turns out, it was just standard Republican policy on steroids (literally a trillion dollar per year tax cut with zero discussion how to pay for it, tilted almost entirely toward upper income folks), but it would occasionally be nice to discuss issues that affect people. But its impossible with Trump (and a large part of the Republican party).

  37. michael reynolds says:

    Stepping back a bit from this particular imbecile of a candidate, the underlying problem is male panic.

    Warrior, head of family, shaman, guide, hunter, all the roles that used to be exclusively male, no longer are. The list of things which are uniquely male has dwindled with alarming rapidity. Women still have gestation, childbirth, nursing. . . plus everything men do. . . and we’ve got sperm donation. We used to be vital, and now you could basically keep homo sapiens bumping along just fine with 1% of us.

    (Lucky 1%, but I digress.)

    This is why we see the obsession with buff male bodies and guns in film. It’s what we’ve got left: muscle mass and a propensity for violence. It’s part of what drives Islamist terrorism. It’s what drives vicious misogyny online. And it’s what drives some men to clowns like Putin or Trump. There’s no escaping the fact that the pie used to be mostly ‘ours’ and it is far less so now.

    Now, some men take the view that this is a good thing. Diversification can aid survival. My wife and I both write. Some years she makes more money, some years I do. We flatten out the ups and downs in our personal economic graphs. We are more survivable.

    But other men feel threatened, dispossessed. They long for a past where they were special and important and had defining roles that only a man could do.

    When you add that loss to a concurrent loss felt by whites who can no longer claim pride of place over all other races, you get men voting for Trump. If they were Muslims they’d support ISIS. If they were Russian they’d support Putin.

    The idea that large segments of the population are in some genuine decline I think is mostly nonsense. Compared to when? 1970? When you had three channels on your TV, could still quite easily die of any number of diseases you can now survive, drove a car that would disintegrate if you tried to turn at more than 20 mph, couldn’t afford a coach seat to Iowa, had a 200 pound set of obsolete encyclopedias, and lived in a house you could now fit into a typical suburban garage?

    The decline is relative, not absolute. But the panic is real, especially among less educated (or intelligent) men for whom the addition of Google and Apple and colonoscopy and infinitely better food and booze, does not counterbalance their sense of loss at no longer being ‘the man of the house.’

    You don’t see the panic in women because they are not in relative decline, they are advancing. Or among blacks because they are also not in relative decline. Or Latinos. Or gays. Or the well-educated. You know, Democrats.

    The only real cure is time. These are going to be older men, men were programmed in the 1950’s through the 1970’s. There are young men just as messed up, but the critical mass is older white males. As they (we) become a smaller and smaller segment of society, this endlessly self-pitying, aggrieved mindset which has now given way to nihilism, will become less of a problem.

  38. Rafer Janders says:

    @Blue Galangal:

    That is awesome. She deserves all the accolades she can get. And those kids are about the cutest kids ever (big “awww” factor there). It’s powerful on a number of levels – it makes me, at least, stop and think, what ARE kids hearing today? What DO they think of this? Do they think this is normal? Do they think because Trump is on TV and saying that, that that makes what he says acceptable since it bears the imprimatur of some kind of bright-box authority?

    Actually, they told me that the hardest part about the shoot was getting the little kids to look neutral and natural when watching Trump, as they almost all had a viscerally negative reaction to him that was hard to disguise. Looks of takes they couldn’t use shoots when the children had frightened or disgusted looks when watching him.

  39. gVOR08 says:

    @Eric Florack: One, you are correct that there is “one thing and one thing alone that they Trump phenomenon can be blamed on.” But it’s not “the GOP establishments (sic) fear of being actually conservative.” It is the Conservative Entertainment Complex which has allowed you and your compeers to stew in your fears and resentments and become totally detached from reality. Goebbels would have been amazed at how effective and profitable a free enterprise propaganda apparatus can be.

    Two, the word “conservative” has become essentially meaningless. However, the Republican establishment wants to preserve and protect the wealth and power of the currently wealthy and powerful. Like it or not, that’s pretty much the de facto definition of conservative.

  40. KM says:

    @michael reynolds :

    Women still have gestation, childbirth, nursing. . . plus everything men do. . . and we’ve got sperm donation. We used to be vital, and now you could basically keep homo sapiens bumping along just fine with 1% of us.

    As a female, I’m totally OK with the idea that artificial wombs are in the not-to-distant future and my unique biological contribution to the species will be replaceable. Though I seriously doubt that if technology came around to make mpreg possible, it would not see heavy adoption by the general male populace. It would give a chance for men to even the score so to speak but somehow I don’t think that vital role is going to have a line around the block of applicants……

  41. michael reynolds says:

    @Eric Florack:

    Do me a favor. List the things you think conservatives should be ‘conserving.’

  42. KM says:

    @Rafer Janders :

    Actually, they told me that the hardest part about the shoot was getting the little kids to look neutral and natural when watching Trump, as they almost all had a viscerally negative reaction to him that was hard to disguise. Looks of takes they couldn’t use shoots when the children had frightened or disgusted looks when watching him.

    Kids recognize a bully when they see one. It’s playground instincts – they can smell a big ole’ meanie 3 sandboxes away. He’s the kind that throws sand in your eyes but tells the teacher you started it if you complain.

  43. Mikey says:

    @michael reynolds:

    List the things you think conservatives should be ‘conserving.’

    Their precious essence must be on the list somewhere.

  44. James Pearce says:

    @michael reynolds:

    Stepping back a bit from this particular imbecile of a candidate, the underlying problem is male panic.

    The biggest Trump supporter I know is a woman who is a) definitely not panicking and b) spends hours mainlining conservative-entertainment-complex “content” Clockwork Orange style.

    Male panic is not the problem. A political philosophy that has only a tenuous connection to reality is the problem.

  45. Just 'nutha ig'rant cracker says:

    @gVOR08:

    However, the Republican establishment wants to preserve and protect the wealth and power of the currently wealthy and powerful. Like it or not, that’s pretty much the de facto definition of conservative.

    To some degree or another, hasn’t this always been true?

  46. Just 'nutha ig'rant cracker says:

    @michael reynolds:

    There are young men just as messed up, but the critical mass is older white males. As they (we) become a smaller and smaller segment of society, this endlessly self-pitying, aggrieved mindset which has now given way to nihilism, will become less of a problem.

    To the extent that the “messed up” youth segment stays uninvolved in political and social life and can be denied access to capital and authority. Again, it’ll be the Js that are the problem. (h/t grumpy realist )

  47. grumpy realist says:

    @KM: I take it you’ve read “Ethan of Athos” by Lois McMaster Bujold? Priceless.

    (The other two books/stories that I have to think “only women will understand the humor here” are “Even the Queen” by Connie Willis and the opening section of “Guilt-Edged Ivory” by Doris Egan.)

  48. grumpy realist says:

    @michael reynolds: Here’s my question: how “powerful” are you really when you’re only psychically satisfied when you’re King of the Hill and everyone else is bowing down to you?

    Seems to me the constant chest-beating is more an indication of weakness, not strength.

    Oh, and we do have the present collection of alt-right idiots….although uterine replicators aren’t going to solve their problems because they seem more occupied in making sure they never get anywhere close to a female, period.

  49. michael reynolds says:

    @grumpy realist:

    I agree completely. I’m trying to be sympathetic, but I’ve never defined myself as part of some male tribe, or in opposition to women. I’m me, not ‘a man,’ or ‘not a chick.’ Part of nothing, 100% of me.

    I don’t believe you borrow virtue by being part of a group, I think you surrender autonomy and to me that’s a bad trade. But I’m a weirdo.

  50. gVOR08 says:

    @michael reynolds: My take has long been that everyone defines the world in term of us vs them. But liberals define “us” with different criteria and a lot more inclusively. Despite gender and ethnic similarity, I would be hard pressed to feel any oneness with Trump or Florack.

  51. Gustopher says:

    He’s bleeding support out of his eyes and wherever.

  52. DrDaveT says:

    @MarkedMan:

    In moving away from the smoke-filled room or brokered conventions of the past they let the pendulum swing too far.

    No, I don’t think I can see it that way. A pendulum implies a 2-dimensional range of options.

    What happened here is that the con men imprudently decided to let the marks decide, rather than (once again) conning them into backing something that benefited the con men, but not the marks. And (shockingly) the marks, who had been manipulated for years by anger and fear, voted out of anger and fear for the candidate who purported to share their anger and fear, and promised to do something about the things they were angry about and fearful of. None of which had anything to do with tax breaks for the wealthy or reducing the bargaining power of labor. Imagine that.

  53. Eric Florack says:

    @C. Clavin: you’re still beating up on the deceased equine?

  54. Eric Florack says:

    @michael reynolds: the Constitution. Limited government. American culture.

  55. DrDaveT says:

    @Eric Florack:

    the Constitution

    More specific, please.

    Limited government

    Again, you need to be more specific. Some people say “limited government” and mean get the government out of women’s wombs, and out of the business of saying who can marry whom, and out of the business of subsidizing certain religions. Others mean protecting wealth, and the right to discriminate, and making sure infrastructure sucks in the future. I’m sure there are other flavors; which are you advocating?

    American culture.

    All Americans? Or just the ones you consider to be ‘real’ Americans? Are you one of those people who would have fought to the end to protect us from the un-American evils of pizza and soccer?

  56. michael reynolds says:

    @Eric Florack:

    What @DrDaveT said. These aren’t anything but mushy generalities that absolutely everyone from the left to the right can agree with. Everyone supports the constitution, no one wants unlimited government, and the whole western world has already adopted American culture.

  57. grumpy realist says:

    @Eric Florack: That’s nothing but a handful of buzz-words. Precision, please. One person says “I protect the Constitution!” and to him that means sending the government agents around to prowl in people’s bedrooms and send an ultrasonic wand up every woman’s vagina. Another person says “I protect the Constitution!” and does the exact opposite.

    So stop with the “look at me I’m so moral” words and please line out IN DETAIL exactly what you would protect and what you wouldn’t.

  58. Andrew says:

    @grumpy realist:

    There are also those that say “I protect the Constitution!” and mean pre-1860’s.

    The OG’s of conservatism.

  59. Eric Florack says:

    @grumpy realist: I should think the answer is rather obvious, and that you are being rather obtuse. The original meaning of the Constitution. Limited government. Individual freedom.

    Put an end to the Democrats destructive Tendencies of using the power of government in an attempt to change the culture

  60. Eric Florack says:

    @grumpy realist: I should think the answer is rather obvious, and that you are being rather obtuse. The original meaning of the Constitution. Limited government. Individual freedom.

    Put an end to the Democrats destructive Tendencies of using the power of government in an attempt to change the culture

  61. Millie Alderman says:

    @Tillman: Well, yeah, it may have been “improper” from your mother’s perspective, but you know, he didn’t have to be a dick about it.

    Next?

  62. grumpy realist says:

    @Eric Florack: So you’re an Originalist?

    (I’ll believe people who claim they’re Originalists when they insist the Second Amendment means everyone is limited to firepower from before 1800. If it ain’t a flintlock rifle with a hand-cast bullet and black powder it ain’t legal.)

  63. Pch101 says:

    The original meaning of the Constitution. Limited government. Individual freedom.

    I suppose that you must have skipped over that slavery thing in your US history class.

  64. DrDaveT says:

    @Eric Florack:

    The original meaning of the Constitution. Limited government. Individual freedom.

    Amusingly, I was just listening today to a lecture about the Federalist Papers, and how part of what Hamilton and Madison were lobbying for was a Constitution that would correct the problem that the Articles of Confederation placed too many limitations on government and allowed too much individual freedom… thus precipitating Shays’ Rebellion.

  65. PatiencePie says:

    @C. Clavin:

    My Tea Party sister is sitting out this election. She has four daughters cannot vote for a man who calls women “pieces of ass” and regularly insults women who are not “at least a 9 or a 10.” How did the Republican Party ever nominate such a jerk?

  66. PatiencePie says:

    @JohnMcC:

    Ha Ha, yes I remember how proud the Republicans were of their “deep bench.” Then Trump decimated the ranks using nothing but insults and hate. What does that tell us about the GOP base?

  67. george pig says:

    Why people still make use of to read news papers when in this technological globe the whole thing is presented
    on web?