Why are Republicans at war with women? Here’s a thought…
Republicans have a gripe with women. Better, they want them to be punished- they don’t even care if some die. This is personal and it is on behalf of the man who has been forced by the courts to pay a woman more than $90 million for sexually assaulting her over 25 years ago. Republicans have decided that if women won’t vote for them, the price they will pay is their lives.
The convo around JD Vance’s clumsy dispatch of “childless cat women” has mostly been treated his statement as a major faux pax. I contend it is not, it is strategic. Attacking women is part of their charmless campaign to sew fear and intimidation into their least favorite demographic. Women, in particular younger women and women of childbearing age, are a demographic that can be easily identified as one Republicans should try to restrain from voting. The loss of Roe and Republican efforts to codify draconian anti-abortion and anti-reproductive health laws in red states has changed all that. Women should be energized to vote in record numbers this year. The Republicans have had to rethink their strategy. This is where MAGA gets to flex its muscle within the party and try to convince them that the mess they have created is, in reality, a plan, call it a concept of a strategy — a counterintuitive screwup that intentionally sets out to lose women voters by attacking them. They are convinced that they can afford to go to war with single, unmarried, childless, and young women. The party has decided this discrete demographic is of little consequence in bright red states and only really matters in swing states and selected suburbs. Blue state women are non-factors because the GOP doesn’t have the bandwidth to compete there since their focus is on the Electoral College.
Don’t believe me, PEW Research did the study:
Married men and women are more likely to identify with or lean toward the Republican Party than their unmarried counterparts, with 59% of married men and half of married women oriented toward the GOP.
And while majorities of both men and women voters who have never been married and do not live with a partner align with the Democratic Party, never-married women are particularly likely to do so:
* Women who have never been married are three times as likely to associate with the Democratic Party as with the Republican Party (72% vs. 24%)
* By a narrower — though still sizable — margin (61% to 37%), never-married men also favor the Democrats.
* Democrats have a substantial advantage among both women and men who live with a partner but are not married, and a narrower edge among those who are divorced or separates.”
- PEW Research Center, “ Partisanship by gender, sexual orientation, marital and parental status”
Some would assume the GOP’s focused attack on women, their reproductive health rights, and their status as mothers, daughters, sisters, and wives is risky. After all, women vote more than men and women are natural organizers and influencers in their various communities. In a 2022 study, 70% of women were registered to vote compared to 68% of eligible males. The risk, however, is calculated. Just as in the 1988 race between Bush and Dukakis during which Lee Atwater concocted the controversial “Willie Horton” advertising, the trick is to alienate as few of your voters as possible while making sure that those you do alienate are the right ones. For George H. W, Bush alienating black voters was far less harmful to his cause than frightening white voters who might otherwise consider voting for the Massachusetts governor. The Republican playbook has long decided to focus on white males and induce a general undertone of fear and dread to balance its inability to attract voters to its message. Boo, see the scary immigrants down the street? Yikes, watch out for your pets!
While Donald Trump has raised the strategy to an art form, Republicans have learned that electoral politics is not about gaining popular majorities but collecting states’ electoral votes. In presidential politics, they have won the popular vote in only one of the past seven elections.
While some might consider JD Vance’s “childless cat women” remark as merely unfortunate and his double-down dumb, both Vance and Trump have decided to allow it to marinate in plain view. Democrats gleefully point out the blatant misogyny while dumb Republicans try to justify it. Here is Sarah Huckabee Sanders trying to validate the “childless” meme and turn it into a “mom” issue:
‘…the most important job I have; the greatest title I have is that of being a mom.’
‘My kids serve as a permanent reminder of everything that is at stake in the country,’ said Huckabee who has three children.
‘Not only do my kids serve as a permanent reminder of what is important they keep me humble,’ she added. ‘My kids keep me humble. Unfortunately, Kamala Harris doesn’t have anything keeping her humble.’
Since Republicans have already decided to write off women who were already unlikely to vote for Trump-Vance, do they care if they offend every woman in every solid blue state or anger one more young, unmarried, gay woman in a red state? No, because those voters are not important to them electorally. In red states, where their votes would matter, Republicans are betting that the racial makeup (white), marital status (married v. single women), and the educational levels of men and women will retain their dominance. The same holds for blue state voters, only the opposite- these are votes that have little value electorally.
The battle then resides in the swing states and that is where Republicans are vulnerable because of their stance against women. Of the states that have the highest number of single women, for example, all but one is electorally vital to victory:
Cue the Haitian from “Haitia” blooper Vance has uttered this week (Yale must be cringing). When all else fails, the GOP is at its best deploying fear, both real due to their propensity for violence and the slickly produced like the Willie Horton ad campaign. Scare enough white people into believing their towns, cities, and states are being overrun by roadkill-eating immigrants, and the issues that surround women that would make them vote in even larger numbers than they had in the past become moot. Women’s health issues and their reproductive health concerns are simply extensions of the Republican Party’s war on public health care. For Republicans, the margins have been thin for so long that they have learned to make the most of their unpopularity. They have learned to gamble that enough voters can be fooled.
There is, however, something different about tactically dismissing women- especially when it is because your base has never been large enough to outlast the party’s loss of demographic and cultural vision. The country they compete in today is far different from the one that put Trump in the White House in 2016. Baby boomers have left the planet and are being replaced by generations that see race, gender, and politics far differently than generations past.
According to statistics gathered by KFF, the Kaiser Family Foundation which conducts independent research on healthcare issues, all is not well among the party’s male-oriented leadership and the rank and file.
In the seven states that have voted on abortion measures since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, anti-abortion positions have lost every time. Michigan, Ohio, Kansas, Kentucky, California, Vermont, and Montana have all witnessed the power of women who refuse to be treated like chattel. Their votes can no longer be taken for granted or considered extraneous. Votes once counted as husband and wife “team votes” will now change in the safety of voting behind the curtain that protects the ballot box. Their “game plan” has potentially fueled a rebellion that could break the electoral imbalance that allows Republicans to be competitive even as they refuse to compete materially on the issues.
Cat women aside, this election may in historical terms be as consequential as the elections of FDR and Richard Nixon. Both of these elections led to long-term realignments of political power in the country. FDR, a decade after women claimed their right to vote, helped create the modern Democratic Party by building a coalition among the poor, the working class, and various ethnic and minority groups. Democrats held majorities in the Senate in all but 2 (the 80th and 83rd) Congresses until Ronald Reagan broke the spell. And except for the 80th Congress they held the House every year after FDR until 1995.
Nixon’s Southern Strategy had a similar effect. Taking on racism as a de facto appeal to white voters, writing off blacks and minorities except at the fringes, remade both parties. Democrat’s embrace of Civil Rights under LBJ was used to wrest the “solid South” from the Democratic Party as Republicans created a home for Southern segregationists within its ranks. Ronald Reagan enjoyed rather large Senate majorities in all but his last 2 years. Since 1995 Republicans have held majorities in both houses of Congress in 7 of 14 Congresses while Democrats have held both in only 2.
Harris can rebuild much of FDR’s coalition and extend its reach by adding a bloc of voters that coalesce around women’s issues. Modern demographics are slowly making the old views on race and politics questionable. Trump and his movement have no such prospects. Trump’s inability to deal with the bi-racial heritage of his opponent is a testament to his movement’s entrenched prejudices. Their path to victory requires voter constraints brought about by confusion, voter suppression, and intimidation. Their path narrows rather than expands voter participation. Any movement that is based upon the diminishing involvement of the citizens and uses fear and intimidation as its principal methodology is by definition autocratic.
A Harris-Walz win in November with a coalition that acknowledges the untapped potential of women for the first time in the seat of power changes everything. So forget the dogs and cats, the childless cat women, and the demented vision being promoted by Republicans holding on to the past for dear life.
After the attempt on Trump’s life in July, Sarah Huckabee-Sanders centered her RNC speech on the premise that the former president was an agent of the Almighty. In her view the reason Trump was faster than that speeding bullet was because God was his Kryptonite:
“Not even an assassin’s bullet could stop him,” Sanders said.
“God Almighty intervened because America is one nation under God, and He is not done with President Trump.”
Maybe not, but perhaps women are. Huckabee-Sanders in her rush to heresy has forgotten one simple fact, God doesn’t vote.
But if She did it, it would be for Harris.
Originally published at https://vincerizzo.substack.com.
