"This started long before President Trump was in office, Michelle Cottle says. So, it is important to remember that this is not something that Trump has wrought. It is just something that he has exploited. And as we always say, dialed up to 11. I mean, if you just want to go back to 2012 with the post-Romney kind of meltdown of the party worrying about the famous autopsy, there was this movement among Republican women operatives, big fund-raisers and the electeds."
"They were trying to make the party more palatable to women, to lose the whole kind of anti-woman reputation that it had gotten when there were those episodes with Todd Akin talking about real rape, those sorts of things. So we're talking about Elise Stefanik was trying to lead her party in a direction that would get more women into the game, whether you were fund-raisers."
"And the party went from being OK with these women doing this, even when it made them a little uncomfortable, because it cuts against the whole idea that you shouldn't worry about gender, that whole we can't even get near identity politics So how can we possibly be promoting a particular gender with a program. It went from being mostly OK with that to just being like, We don't care anymore. We're just going to go all in on this."
The Republican Party has struggled for years to make itself more appealing to women, with initiatives after 2012 led by Republican women operatives, fund-raisers, and elected officials. Efforts sought to shed an anti-woman reputation stemming from incidents like Todd Akin's remarks about "real rape." Leaders such as Elise Stefanik and a consultancy from Mitt Romney's former campaign manager worked to recruit and support women candidates and fund-raisers. The rise of Donald Trump reversed many of those gains as the party embraced his crude, sexist persona. Increased misogyny and hypermasculinity have eroded support for programs aimed at increasing women's participation and leadership.
Read at www.nytimes.com
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