How the GOP treats women
Here’s the Washington Post:
As a former communications aide to Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) and former senator Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), I can personally testify that Republican women have, for years, fended off accusations from the Democrats of the party’s allegedly anti-woman beliefs. What did we get for it? The nomination — by way of a largely older, male voting base — of a brazen and unapologetic misogynist.
I want to ask the men leading the GOP some questions. Why didn’t you defend women from this raging sexist especially after so many Republican women — for so many years — eagerly defended the party from charges of sexism? You must make us out for fools.
Over the course of the GOP primary, it became clear that too many Republicans felt it was too politically risky to do anything that would offend the types of voters Trump was attracting in droves — the types who showed up at rallies wearing T-shirts that said, “Trump that b—-” and “She’s a c—, vote for Trump.”
Somehow, in some amorphous but unambiguous way, it was decided that appealing to those voters was more important than appealing to women.
Some of my commenters actually claim Trump is a “dove”. Not quite:
On the tapes, Mr. Trump describes a passionate enjoyment of fighting, which started during his adolescence in Queens. It did not matter, he said, whether an altercation was verbal or physical. He loved it all the same.
MR. TRUMP: I was a very rebellious kind of person. I don’t like to talk about it, actually. But I was a very rebellious person and very set in my ways.
INTERVIEWER: In eighth grade?
MR. TRUMP: I loved to fight. I always loved to fight.
INTERVIEWER: Physical fights?
MR. TRUMP: Yeah, all kinds of fights, physical …
INTERVIEWER: Arguments?
MR. TRUMP: All types of fights. Any kind of fight, I loved it, including physical. …
His behavior was so belligerent that his parents sent him off around age 13 to the all-boys New York Military Academy, a highly regimented school about an hour north of Manhattan. He seemed to revel in the masculine culture of confrontation there. In the interview, he sounds nostalgic for the time when roughness and physical conflict were more acceptable:
MR. TRUMP: I’m standing there at the military academy and this guy comes out, he’s like a bulldog, too, rough guy. He was a drill sergeant. Now they call him “Major Dobias,” but he was a sergeant. When I first knew him, he was “Sergeant Dobias,” right out of the Army.
And he was a rough guy, physically rough and mentally rough. He was also my baseball coach. He said things like, “Stand up!” and I went, “Give me a [expletive] break.” And this guy came at me, you would never believe it. I mean, it was really fantastic.
INTERVIEWER: Did he rough you up?
MR. TRUMP: Oh yeah, absolutely.
INTERVIEWER: Grabbed you by the shirt …
MR. TRUMP: It doesn’t matter, it was not like what happens today. And you had to learn to survive. It was tough. It wasn’t today. Those were rougher times. … These guys, you go back to some of those old drill sergeants, they can’t even understand what’s going on with this country.
“But how do you explain the fact that he opposed the Iraq War?” Simple, he supported it.
He’s also using campaign donations for his personal profit:
The Daily Beast previously reported that Trump spent $55,000 in money from his own campaign to buy copies of his latest book, Crippled America, which was published by Simon and Schuster. Copies were distributed to GOP delegates attending the summer convention in Cleveland.
The purchase of books is just the latest example of Trump using donors’ money to purchase goods and services from his own businesses and generating personal profit for himself.
Trump houses his campaign headquarters in Trump Tower in midtown Manhattan, where the campaign pays $169,758 a month for office space at about $100 per square foot. (The Clinton campaign, in contrast, rents two floors in a Brooklyn Heights office building for about $32 per square foot.)
Trump paid his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach $423,373 on the same day in May that his campaign finalized a deal with the RNC that began bringing him hundreds of millions of dollars of outside donations ― even though the only events he’d held there were two victory parties and an afternoon news conference two months earlier. He could have held those three events at nearby hotels for a total of about $40,000.
In July, Trump’s campaign sent $48,240 to his Westchester County golf course. The only event it had hosted for him was a June 7 victory party. Trump could have used a ballroom at a nearby Marriott hotel for less than half that much.
And Trump’s insistence on using his own personal Boeing 757 jet is now costing taxpayers millions of dollars extra. Because Trump’s Secret Service detail is making up a large percentage ― and on some days even a majority ― of the flying passengers, the agency must pay a proportionate share of the $10,000-an-hour flying costs.
In a recent post I suggested that Trump cared so little about America that he was only spending 1% or 2% of his $10 billion fortune on “saving the country”. I was wrong. He’s spending an order of magnitude less than that, more like 0.2%:
Trump’s staff has defended his decisions to spend more at his own businesses rather than use less-expensive alternatives by pointing out that he is contributing $2 million a month to his own campaign.
That $2 million figure, however, is dwarfed by the many tens of millions of dollars per month coming to Trump’s campaign from both large and small donors.
He might be the most selfish bastard in all of American political history. And yet despite everything, including dozens of press stories claiming that he’s already lost the race, he still has a reasonable chance of winning (about 17%.) Indeed the polls have tightened slightly this week.
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26. October 2016 at 10:26
Sumner’s focus: all personality, no policy. Focus on policy.
“Simple, he supported it.”
-Not anywhere near as much as, say, Mike Pence.
Black turnout remains down by a lot in NC.
If Trump treats women so badly, then why do Ivanka, Tiffany, and all his wives support him?
Trump has a winning personality.
26. October 2016 at 10:33
“If Trump treats women so badly, then why do Ivanka, Tiffany, and all his wives support him?”
Probably for the same reasons they married him in the first place. Big Green Bills…
Why else would a beautiful model marry an ugly old man that is on his third wife due to his inability to be faithful to the marriage bed?
26. October 2016 at 10:35
I wonder if they have to sign an agreement (to never say anything bad about him publicly for life) like his campaign volunteers and employees do. Although Ivanka did at one point accuse him of rape so maybe not.
26. October 2016 at 10:37
What is the point of this post? Trolling for Trump headlines?
Is there really any confusion about the concept of “lesser of two evils” for any thinking adult? I say “thinking adult”, because thinking adults are able to understand that other thinking adults weigh their options differently. What matters more? Felony corruption or womanizing? Free trade or Fare trade? Wildcard foreign policy or aggressive foreign policy? … Everyone has a different utility weighting function (including risk tolerance), that’s why thinking adults support capitalism.
26. October 2016 at 10:42
I dunno. I kind of hate the term “misogynist”. How many people have you met that actually hate women? I’ve seen some online that fit that description. A few. Nobody I know in real life does.
I don’t think Trump hates women, he just doesn’t respect them. He doesn’t respect them as people, as autonomous, as ends in themselves. But then again Trump doesn’t seem to respect anyone. He’s a raging psychopathic narcissist who will walk all over anyone he can get away with. So when he does things like call someone a “fat pig” or says “grab them by the pussy”, I don’t think it quite marks him out as a “misogynist”, it marks him out as a scumbag.
26. October 2016 at 10:52
17% chance is the same as losing Russian Roulette
26. October 2016 at 11:29
@Don: so Clinton is corrupt, but after reading about all of the self-dealing Trump is doing in this very post that’s far worse than anything Clinton has done, you still vote for the nutty clown?
No, you are just Team Red, and would vote for a bucket of marbles if that was on the ticket for the Reps.
26. October 2016 at 11:54
From my experience sex-crazed people like Trump and Bill Clinton are quite successful with women. They must have other sides as well. Maybe there’s 10% abuse, maybe even criminally relevant abuse, but the other 90% most likely consists of other things like constant courting, one present after another, and so on.
The polls are indeed tightening again despite the lewd video and rather weak debate performances. So Trump could still make it as long as Hillary doesn’t use her stockpile of material. Maybe Trump made a deal: No more videos from either side, or material from the Russians.
26. October 2016 at 13:15
Yes, normal men like to fight.
As opposed to the eunuchs the Cathedral would have us all be.
This is pathetic, Scotty. Try harder.
26. October 2016 at 13:15
Also, if you don’t worship women, you’re a misogynist.Spoken like a true virgin.
26. October 2016 at 14:33
BTW, is Sumner really so ignorant as to think Trump wouldn’t have won the Republican primaries if only women were allowed to vote? Guess what? Trump would still have won the Republican primaries even if only women were allowed to vote in them!
This is like saying the Democratic Party treats Blacks terribly while Hillary Clinton won 80%+ of the Black vote!
26. October 2016 at 15:00
I read somewhere that many successful businessmen started out as bullies in school, or were in the military. Not all, but a significant number, so Trump’s story is not unique. Sumner also feels Trump is worth $10 billion? I would say one-third of this, at best, since Trump is a self-promoter.
26. October 2016 at 15:57
I’d really love to see the calculations behind all these claims he’s wasting money by spending it at his own hotels. The article has the ring of ‘ignorant of basic business economics journalism’.
AKA, You get what you pay for.
Btw, if Trump is a misogynist, what’s Kelly Anne doing running his campaign?
26. October 2016 at 16:11
I get the impression Scott Sumner does not appreciate Don Trump.
26. October 2016 at 16:51
BTW, I was retweeted by Obama’s half-brother just today. True story!
26. October 2016 at 18:22
Daniel,
You’re confusing men with boys. Boys like to fight and grab girls without permission.
Am I to take it you’re a member of the alt-right?
26. October 2016 at 18:51
Harding, You said:
“Sumner’s focus: all personality, no policy. Focus on policy.”
When will Trump release his proposed tax reform? When he does, I’ll be sure to evaluate it.
Larry, You said:
“I don’t think Trump hates women, he just doesn’t respect them. He doesn’t respect them as people, as autonomous, as ends in themselves.”
Umm, I think that’s what the feminists are talking about.
Dennis, Too late, I already used that analogy in a post.
Christian, You said:
“From my experience sex-crazed people like Trump and Bill Clinton are quite successful with women.”
Polls show he’s not at all successful in getting women to vote for him—indeed they may well cost him the election.
Ray, you said:
“Sumner also feels Trump is worth $10 billion?”
No I don’t–that’s what Trump claims he’s worth. He’s only willing to spend only 0.2% of what he claims he has in order to save America. I doubt he’s worth one billion.
Scott, Of course he’s confusing men with boys, who do you think he hangs around with?
26. October 2016 at 19:31
“Polls show he’s not at all successful in getting women to vote for him—indeed they may well cost him the election.”
-He was successful at getting women to vote for him in the primaries. Only four primaries (Vermont, Virginia, Missouri, and North Carolina) which were won by Trump would have gone to somebody else had men been prohibited from voting in the GOP primary.
26. October 2016 at 20:45
@Harding: It’s so dumb to keep using voting data from the batshit Republican primaries as representative of the general.
More evidence of your 96 IQ.
27. October 2016 at 00:54
Women LOVE men who fight and grab them without asking for permission (a woman’s consent is ALWAYS non-verbally implied).
Not that I’d expect a bunch of autistic virgins to understand the fine nuances of the human mating dance.
27. October 2016 at 01:30
And yes, of course women are lacking agency. If any of you neckbeards ever left your mom’s basement, you’d see it for yourself.
See kids, in the real world this is what women lust after.
Not white-knighting virgins.
27. October 2016 at 04:31
“I want to ask the men leading the GOP some questions. Why didn’t you defend women from this raging sexist especially after so many Republican women — for so many years — eagerly defended the party from charges of sexism? You must make us out for fools.”
I think this is unfair criticism, what did she expect, that GOP leaders ignored primary and caucus results ? I am not an expert, but it looks to me that very few, if any, GOP leaders enthusiastically supported Trump… But he won the nomination with votes, so, this is not something fair to say…
27. October 2016 at 05:06
Anyone else notice the unintended irony in the Fair Amanda’s whine?
Trump has made a centerpiece of his campaign that he wants to keep out of the USA all the bad actors from Islamic countries and Mexico (where the term ‘macho’ was invented). Shouldn’t ‘Spare me from misogyny’ Amanda Carpenter be happy about that?
As for Trump’s pugilistic instincts, we wouldn’t have won at Normandy, nor the Battle of the Bulge, nor Guadacanal … without guys like that.
27. October 2016 at 05:46
Daniel gets it. Scott Sumner seems to think that the manosphere half of the alt-right (aka TheRedPill) hates beta males and worships “alphas” (like ex-cons turned models). But they merely recongnize that, without traditional societal controls, women will follow their biological imperative (hypergamy) to get toughguy alpha sperm and secure niceguy beta resources. If the world is so feminized that normal rough-and-tumble males like the young Donald are demonized and niceguy betas are all that’s left, women will sadly resort to mating with exciting criminal scum.
The manosphere is actually on the side of betas. Civilized societies developed a mechanism to control alpha-dominated harems called “monogamy.” But thanks to the pill, divorce rape, and out-of-control feminism, marriage is no longer a viable option for any sane, hard-working beta. More men are starting to realize this, which is what is causing the rift between the niceguy GOPe “cucks” and the Red Pill aware (not necessarily alpha) alt-right.
Rollo Tomassi explains it better than I can here.
27. October 2016 at 06:12
Daniel and Word, We aren’t in the Middle Ages any more—time to grow up. In any case, it was the Trumpistas who were claiming that he was a dove, a softie. Now you guys are insisting he’s a tough guy—but that proves the point of my post. He’s a hawk.
Patrick, Eisenhower attitude toward fighting was about as opposite from Trump as one could imagine. He had tears in his eyes after he reviewed the soldiers that were preparing for the Battle of Normandy. Trump’s like an immature adolescent bully, totally unfit for a serious job where lives are at stake.
27. October 2016 at 06:37
@Patrick: LOL, if Trump were in a war he’d be shitting himself and crying for daddy to save him. Or mommy. As you know he avoided Vietnam for a bullshit reason, he could have gone over there and done plenty of the fighting he loves so much. Hillary could kick his ass.
27. October 2016 at 06:58
“Now you guys are insisting he’s a tough guy—but that proves the point of my post. He’s a hawk.”
-You’re brainless.
27. October 2016 at 07:00
LTrump’s like an immature adolescent bully, totally unfit for a serious job where lives are at stake.”
-No; that’s Clinton.
27. October 2016 at 08:40
Scotty,
I don’t care about Trump.
What I’m saying is that you’re all a bunch of low-testosterone wimps.
And no, that doesn’t make you better, it just means you’re weak.
And the fact that women are lining up to blow tattooed criminals instead of you only proves me right.
But hey – denial ain’t just a river in Egypt.
27. October 2016 at 11:33
Wait – his book is called “Crippled America?”
27. October 2016 at 11:38
Of course, it is not really possible to tell, given all the pseudonyms people use as their names. But it just occurred to me that it appears very few women post on this sight. I wonder if Prof Sumner gives off a Misogynist vibe? People in glass houses……. 🙂
27. October 2016 at 11:57
‘Trump’s like an immature adolescent bully, totally unfit for a serious job where lives are at stake.’
I don’t think the evidence shows that he’s a bully. A showman, a salesman, a braggart…yeah.
As far as whether he’s qualified to hold an office where others’ lives are at stake, well, compared to whom? And how would we know? I don’t think anyone would have predicted that Audie Murphy would become the most decorated soldier of WWII based on his background.
One of the unremarked upon oddities of this election is that the Dem, Rep and Libertarian tickets would all be improved by dumping the #1s and replacing them with their VPs.
27. October 2016 at 12:01
‘Hillary could kick his ass.’
Well, she certainly tried to do that to her husband. Lucky he had Secret Service protection. But, I suspect, she’d rely on some underhanded legal maneuver to deal with Trump. Like what she and Al Gore cooked up for Billy Dale–speaking of things that disqualify a person from holding high political office, imho.
27. October 2016 at 12:20
Also, my pumpkin was vandalized again today. And during the day, too!
America has to be tough on crime! Clinton will be soft!
27. October 2016 at 13:16
I should have added above, that when Eisenhower needed someone he could count on to defeat Germans, he turned to the Trump-like Patton. Who (at least in the movie) also cried over his fallen boys.
Then he went out and did what he really liked to do, kill the enemy.
27. October 2016 at 13:46
@Patrick: Patton would kick your ass just for saying he’s like Trump. My grandma could kick Trump’s ass. Seriously, talk about “all hat no cattle”, he’s the poster child.
You’re right about the VPs though.
27. October 2016 at 14:02
“One of the unremarked upon oddities of this election is that the Dem, Rep and Libertarian tickets would all be improved by dumping the #1s and replacing them with their VPs.”
-180 degrees the opposite of the truth. Each would be more electable (Weld famously won all but six townships in Massachusetts, Kaine won every election he ran in, Pence has a better image than Trump among Republicans). Each would almost certainly be worse presidents (the difference between Clinton and Kaine is smallest, though).
Trump as president is infinitely preferable to Pence.
Clinton as president is probably preferable to Kaine.
Johnson as president is infinitely preferable to Weld.
27. October 2016 at 15:55
“Daniel and Word, We aren’t in the Middle Ages any more”
You sure about that?
Hillary and Trump. QED.
27. October 2016 at 16:45
““misogynist”. How many people have you met that actually hate women?”
you are taking the term too literally…more literally than a dictionary… It means being bigoted against women, as well as hating them.
27. October 2016 at 18:00
Here’s a nightmare for all the anti Trump folks to contemplate…… And a hope for the caved up Trumpkins…
If you believe in the multiverse theories.. (they have gone from fringe, to probably, the leading theory(s)of the structure of reality today)… then the 17% “chance” that trump will win…means that he WILL win in 17% of the universes that up to this point were effectively the same as ours… And that the number of universes where that will happen to earth is one of those numbers so big that humans can’t really comprehend them….
That’s so many will suffer trump… I Find that disturbing…
happy Halloween…
if you are not familiar with the multiverse theories the basic rule is… If it is a possibility, it will be expressed . Or that there is a unique universe for every possible expression of reality.
so each universe is unique. Some universes are different from each other in almost every way…but some are “almost” identical..
and others literally span every possibility in between…
The worlds that are effectively like ours are a small special case of universes…but they are still…multitudes… These are universes where the only different possibilities expressed.. that were different than ours… were inconsequential…
….Remember that a flap of butterfly wing CAN cause a hurricane…but the vast majority of the time it is just a flap…
Of course Nate Silver is great and all… but it’s a pretty safe bet his numbers really are not up to expressing the odds of the outcomes on the real multiverse level…
but still..ick… right ?
27. October 2016 at 18:06
Trump is first and foremost *a blowhard*. I wouldn’t believe a word of his self-professed badassery.
27. October 2016 at 18:07
OH…and another disturbing thing… the outcome is kinda like Schrödinger’s cat… ‘cept instead opening the box, we’ll vote. And instead of a 50/50 chance at a dead cat, we have a “17%” chance at a trump…
I don’t now why that seems scarier to me than just having a 17% chance of it happening to me..it the same thing… But knowing that it will happen to other Bill Ellis’…
Chilling.
27. October 2016 at 19:43
“Trump is first and foremost *a blowhard*. I wouldn’t believe a word of his self-professed badassery.”
This is really the most strange and absurd defense of Trump. And I have heard it as a *defense* of Trump by otherwise mainstream Republicans. The thinking goes that Trump is this ephemeral showman who, in the end, will at least sign a capital gains tax cut.
And if you’re talking about whether Trump supports or opposes a multitude of common issues, such as abortion, taxes, health care or even immigration, then you are correct. Other than perhaps taxes he personally pays, he has never had a substantial thought about a political issue.
But what he *is* consistent about is what makes him scary. He has been consistent on shows of strength always being a virtue and that literally everything in life is a zero-sum competition. Going back to the 80’s he has both praised dictators and seized on trade issues where it looked like we are “losing.”
He clearly has an extremely insecure, egocentric core where everything else is secondary. And while from afar, where he’s only a reality show star, we can laugh at it, the military has to take his commands seriously, no matter how foolish.
27. October 2016 at 21:09
@ Bill Ellis
I think Trump is bigoted against human beings.
But if that’s all that was wrong with him I wouldn’t be so worried as I am. Trump is a populist demagogue who thinks the entire system of liberal democracy is so rotten that it needs to torn up by the roots and remade in his own image. He’s a Gracchus. He’s Hugo Chavez. He is an existential threat to the republic and he must be stopped.
28. October 2016 at 01:08
Yo Lawrence,
If you had half a brain you’d already have noticed the republic is long dead.
28. October 2016 at 07:49
@Bill Ellis
The multiverse theory is not changing the odds. To me it’s just another way of saying that there can be only one result in the end (in our universe). A rather trivial idea.
I find this more interesting:
There are still a few polls out there in which Trump is leading. There are also a few (okay very few) “perfect” scenarios in which Trump gets 270 electoral votes or more.
Voting is basically one big poll at one specific day (or in the days of early voting: few days to weeks). Trump “just” needs to win this one “poll” to gain the electoral votes needed, and mostly at the Election Day.
The question is how you calculate the odds for this one poll. Do you count all previous recent polls together or not? That’s the question where it gets interesting, and I don’t think it’s as trivial as it might seem at first glance.
28. October 2016 at 07:51
<em
Polls show he’s not at all successful in getting women to vote for him
I wasn’t talking about voting obviously.
28. October 2016 at 09:51
The worse the post, the worse the comments.
29. October 2016 at 09:01
Ssumner,
I’m no fan of trump, but I wouldn’t call him a hawk. He doesn’t understand the world enough to choose a reflexively ideological foreign policy position.
Btw, a while ago I tried to convince Prof Bob Frank about market monetarism. Telling him his textbook co-author disagreed (Bernake) with him didn’t do much. OTOH, he’s a micro guy, which is what he told me when I challenged him on his pushing on a string theory. Maybe you can do the heavy lifting next time you see him. For the record I think he’s an incredible grad school prof and a legitimately brilliant, engaging, sincere and kind man.
Anyways, don’t be discouraged Dr. Sumner. The election will be over soon, and your comments will return to baseline normalcy. Those of us who read you for your economic insight will continue to do so, the paid trolls and political hacks will leave.
Life goes on. This embarrassment of an election will pass. “This too, shall pass.”
29. October 2016 at 09:48
Anon39, I might miss the election, it’s been depressing, but also wildly entertaining.
Thanks for trying to sell my ideas to Professor Frank.
29. October 2016 at 11:10
One of the unremarked upon oddities of this election is that the Dem, Rep and Libertarian tickets would all be improved by dumping the #1s and replacing them with their VPs.
Wm. Weld is an intelligent man. That aside, there’s never been any there there other than yacht club attitudes.
29. October 2016 at 11:19
Amanda Carpenter needs a more exacting line-editor.
29. October 2016 at 19:36
‘Wm. Weld is an intelligent man. That aside, there’s never been any there there other than yacht club attitudes.’
The only relevant point is whether or not there’s more ‘there there’ with Weld than with his running mate.
29. October 2016 at 19:38
‘Amanda Carpenter needs a more exacting line-editor.’
That and 15 IQ points.
1. November 2016 at 10:30
That and 15 IQ points.
She’s a public relations aide. She doesn’t have to be smart. She has to be articulate and turn in copy on time. Problem: a great many words to give expression to a vague idea.
I don’t blame her for smoldering at Trump. She was one of the women run over in the National Enquirer‘s ‘five mistresses’ smear.