Republican lawmakers in Washington have taken notice that the number of their party’s female contingent in the House is going down. There are four female GOP House members in the 2019 GOP caucus. Apparently, according to Jennifer Rubin in her column today in The Washington Post, the men are clueless as to why women are losing interest in running under the GOP flag. In addition, in the Mid-terms a huge chunk of women voters switched sides moving away from the GOP candidates to vote for the Dem candidates..(See yesterday’s LPW’s post.)
Any reasonably sentient, politically aware woman in this country could easily provide answers to the GOP’s men’s bafflement. It goes something like this: Women generally do not like misogynists especially those who brag about sexual assaults along with their ability to get away with their crimes. Women don’t like bullies. Women have had to face bullies in their their families, in schools or in the workplace. Women have had to learn to kowtow to these bullies or face the consequences of the bullies’ wrath.
And having to watch a bully operating in the White House on TV makes most women cringe – even if they agree with the policies bully Trump espouses. Women also cringe when they see babies torn from the arms of their mothers no matter what the justification for this action happens to be. Separating children from their mothers goes against the intrinsic maternal grain that most women hold close.
Close to this inherent emotion is the fact that women worry about the health of their loved ones. Trump and the GOP’s assault on the ACA and the latest dire threat to its existence prompts millions of women to ratchet up their profound dread that they might not be able to afford necessary treatments for one of their family members. The GOP gets all the blame for this latest fiasco.
To badger and humiliate. to mock and make bogus excuses on a never ending loop of disagreeable leadership rankles women over time even IF Trump’s victims are those certain women resent as well. Perhaps men have greater tolerance for this constant nastiness and ugliness – generally speaking women not so much.
Finally, women are seeing the GOP male lawmakers who should be standing up to Trump’s outrageous obsequiousness to Putin and the Saudis as pathetic. Women also do not like the fact that Trump’s Secretary appointments are riddled with fraudsters and cheats.
Women likewise sense that the GOP lawmakers in Congress have become emasculated and weak due to their fear of the Trump base.and their overriding fear of losing their seats. Principles and ethics have been tossed overboard and the Republican Party has become an empty shell.
And so as often happens, women are figuring this all out some sooner than others in advance of men. More and more they understand that lurking beneath the Republican Party are pathologies which are dragging the country down. Women do not want to belong to such a party and women do not want to vote for candidates from that party. Let’s hope the men in this country start catching on to all of this. The Trump white male base and the white male GOP lawmakers need to have their respective epiphanies begin soon. The country desperately awaits.