GOP CONSULTANT: CREDIT FOR A POTENTIAL TRUMP LOSS GOES TO THE WOMEN OF AMREICA

…FOX’S Megyn Kelly

 

Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) “I cannot and will not support a candidate who brags about degrading and assaulting women.”

 

A deputy campaign manager for Mitt Romney in 2012 has made the following statement after Donald Trump's video boasted that he had sexually assaulted women throughout his career.  “For next-generation professional women, the party is going to have to do something very, very drastic to change the course of where this candidate has taken us.  I think the leaders in our party are going to have to aggressively reject this. Come November 9, they better be prepared to make very strong statements condemning all of Trump’s behavior.”

 

A growing number of prominent Republican women are worried that as members of their male-dominated party step up to defend Donald Trump against accusations of sexual assault, they are causing major damage to the GOP’s relationship with female voters.

 

Of course, Trump has long been under the media’s eye due to his disgusting comments about women, but when after the Access Hollywood video surfaced, 11 women came forward through Attorney Gloria Allred and accused Trump of sexual assault.  (A 12 woman accuser has since surfaced. ) Will this be the final straw for a Trump election loss? 

 

A series of mostly male Republicans have come to Trump’s defense.  But of all people, they included Rudy Giuliani, and Newt Gingrich.  If you look at Trump, Giuliani, and Gingrich together, you are looking a misogynist / sexual assaulter on his third marriage; plus one individual that was forced to resign as House Speaker and is on his third wife and he had cheated on his first two wife’s; this plus a former mayor of New York City that is also on his third wife.  By Trump dismissing his accusers as liars and being supported by these questionable individuals, this is just continuing to alienate the female voters that the party desperately needs in order to survive.

 

This division within the Republican Party comes just as polls suggest the nation is on the verge of electing its first female president. Ironically, it is Trump’s candidacy, rather than Hillary Clinton’s husband, that has brought sexism to the forefront of the current political debate.

 

This controversy comes as the Republican Party continues to struggle to attract women, who make up a majority of the electorate.  Women have supported the Democratic presidential candidate in every election going back to 1992. President Obama won women by 11 points in 2012, and several polls show Clinton leading among women by an even bigger margin this year.

 

It is amazing how so many Republican women have come out against Donald Trump and have had it with supporting Trump as their nominee.

 

Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) said this month she, “cannot and will not support a candidate for president who brags about degrading and assaulting women.”

 

Former presidential candidate Carly Fiorina, whose looks Trump had said “Look at that face!  Would anyone vote for that? Can you imagine that as the face of our next president?" .   Fiorina has since said, “Donald Trump does not represent me or my party.” And former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice wrote on Facebook: “Enough!  Donald Trump should not be President.”

 

Many other Republican women have concluded in recent weeks that this is not the party they know.

 

The latest brouhaha came when the disgraced, former GOP House Speaker Gingrich exploded directly  at Fox News’ Megyn Kelly during an interview, repeatedly shaking his finger at her and accusing her of being “fascinated with sex”.  This was because she brought up allegations of sexual assault against Trump. In a scolding tone, Gingrich tried to tell Ms. Kelly which words she could or could not use.  For a misogynist like Gingrich to be doing this to such a well-respected woman such as Kelly, this was just too much for most educated women.

 

But as expected, Trump’s reaction to the Gingrich-Kelly verbal exchange came from him on the next day: “Congratulations, Newt.  We don’t play games, Newt, right?”

 

Some of you may be too young to remember, Speaker Gingrich once had a sex-fascination of his own about President Bill Clinton’s sex life.  Gingrich was the driving force behind the movement to impeach President Clinton following a consensual sexual relationship Clinton  had with a young former White House intern.

 

Voters, later punished the Republicans for what they saw as Gingrich’s overreach. The GOP then lost five House seats in the 1998 midterm elections, which then led to Gingrich’s forced resignation as Speaker of the House.

 

Meanwhile, even though the nation and the world’s women have stated total disgust at what Gingrich did to Ms. Kelly, Trump and his supporters deemed Gingrich’s interview a victory, with the  Trump campaign’s director of social media tweeting that Kelly is “not very smart” and telling his followers: “Watch what happens to her after this election is over.”

 

Little does this director realize that he is just pounding more nails in Trump’s coffin with Tweets like that about a woman.

 

Amanda Carpenter, a conservative commentator and former communications director for Sen. Ted Cruz’s presidential campaign who had written a scathing  Post article against Trump, she has said after the Gingrich/Kelly exchange, “Looks like Newt Gingrich just proved my point again.”

 

Carpenter had written in the article, “If the GOP has truly convinced itself that openly engaging in sexual assault fantasies is something normal that men do among one another, I have a suggestion. Relocate the Republican National Committee headquarters into a men’s-only locker room.  Just eliminate all pretenses of wanting to let women in.”

 

The Democrats are using this activity in a very different way.  Christine Matthews, a Republican pollster, said in an interview that the Democrats no longer have to push a GOP “war on women” narrative. Especially because it’s playing out on its own, thanks to Donald Trump plus those comments that Gingrich made against Ms. Kelly.  “It’s just one more clueless middle-age-to-older white guy taking to task a woman,” Matthews said. “It’s so unhelpful on every level.”

 

Nicolle Wallace, a conservative political commentator that had worked for George W. Bush tweeted that Republicans are now “engaged in a hot war against women that will end badly” for the party.

“Men like @newtgingrich are a big reason the GOP has lost women.  Men like him don’t make women like me want to share a ‘tent’ w/them.”

 

There is so much on-going proof about how Trump and apparently how many in the GOP feel about some women:

 

As examples:

 

>>> When the Muslim American parents of a soldier killed in Iraq in 2004 appeared at the Democratic National Convention, Trump then went after the mother, Ghazala Khan.  Trump said in an ABC News interview: “She had nothing to say. She probably — maybe she wasn’t allowed to have anything to say.” Khan later explained that it is still too difficult for her to talk about her son’s death.

 

>>> When the hosts of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” were critical of Trump, he went after the female host, Mika Brzezinski, tweeting: “Just heard that crazy and very dumb @morningmika had a mental breakdown while talking about me on the low ratings @Morning_Joe. Joe a mess!”

 

>>> Trump has told NBC’s Katy Tur to “be quiet” when she pressed him with questions during a news conference.

 

>>> Trump went after CNN’s Dana Bash saying that she was being “rude” to ask about the propriety of holding an event boosting his new Washington DC hotel.

 

>>> Remember when Trump urged his millions of Twitter followers to search for what was a nonexistent “sex tape” of a former Miss Universe whom he had criticized as being ”fat”.

 

>>> And of course Trump has accused Hillary Clinton of lacking “a presidential look,” whatever the hell that means.

 

John Weaver is a long-time GOP consultant,  Weaver is stunned by “Trump’s misogyny” and he said “If you have a gender gap the size of the Snake River Canyon, why do you trot out Newt Gingrich, and  Rudy Giuliani and talk about it and just make it all worse?”   He also noted that all three men have been married three times. “The only ones I can see who seem to be obsessed about sex in this campaign are those three people.”  Weaver continued: “He’s going to lose the general election, and the credit goes to the women of America who are saving us from this guy.”

 

I sure hope Mr. Weaver is correct.

 

Copyright G.Ater  2016