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Robert Costa
A national political reporter covering the White House, Congress and Campaigns
The Republican Party's struggle to save the Supreme Court candidate on charges of sexual assault has raised serious concerns about the hypermasculine mentality that has characterized the GOP in the gender debate.
The images are striking: the specter of Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee – the 11 men – questioning the woman accused by Judge Brett A. Kavanaugh of the US Court of Appeals. A senior GOP assistant working on confirmation resigning among his own allegations of sexual harassment. A Viral photo "Women for Kavanaugh" featuring more men than women. A Republican Congressman from South Carolina makes a rude joke about Ruth Bader Ginsburg's justice that is triumphing to Abraham Lincoln.
And then there is the identity of the party, Trump, who, as a candidate, denied more than a dozen allegations of sexual assault and harassment and sought to silence and retaliate against his accusers – and who, as president, defended one of the defendants.
The time has come to highlight the gap that has emerged between the two political parties as they navigate the cultural perspective of the United States on sexual assault. Democrats have adopted the #MeToo movement to galvanize voters and try to bring dozens of women candidates to victory in the November mid-term elections. An increasing number of Democratic women are also considering presidential campaigns in 2020.
On the other hand, the strategists of both parties claim that Trump's agenda and style – and the fact that the GOP leaders are closely linked to him – are destroying years of often laborious work by party leaders to pursue more of their work. women and minorities.
Trump may solidify the Republican Party as a group of men. Although the president is not on the ballot this fall, he frames the mid-term elections as a referendum on his presidency. Party leaders and members fear what Alex Castellanos, GOP strategist, has called a "pink wave". of the House, and perhaps the Senate, to reprimand Trump.
"Dislike of women – suburban women, white and graduates of higher education – transcends anything I have ever seen in politics," said Castellanos. "And it's not just Trump's politics, of course. This is Trump as a male of the sixties "Mad Men". It's Trump who has caught women where he should not. Women vote against Donald Trump because they see him as a culturally regressive force that defeats women's march to equality. "
[Republicans push to confirm Kavanaugh amid fears it will come at a political cost]
The flaws were evident last week, when Trump spoke of the Kavanaugh episode saying that the real victim was the federal judge, accused by Christine Blasey Ford at 17 and attacking Ford's credibility. The comments of the president made some elected Republicans manifestly ill at ease; Senator Susan Collins (R-Maine) described them as "dreadful".
But the president is not an isolated person outside the mainstream of the party. Trump embodies the instincts, grievances and worldview of his political base, roaring about what he sees as an injustice to the accused and driving his party with him.
"All of this stuff at one point sums up the Republican Party's problem with women, who are dominated by men – with the Trump cabinet and Republican leaders – and the dismissals of women victims of harassment and aggression. . blame the victim, "said Democratic pollster Anna Greenberg.
Senator Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) speaks with reporters on Thursday about allegations of sexual assault on Supreme Court candidate Brett Kavanaugh. (Katherine Frey / The Washington Post)
In Trump's political orbit, the former White House official has long called gender blindness a "political blindness" – partly because the president is unhappy with the charges against him and his colleagues. allies. the broader issue as a topic of liberal discussion.
Trump proudly refuses to filter what he calls political correctness; He recently called former assistant Omarosa Manigault Newman a "dog" after he published a book to be told that revealed the president was destabilized.
The Trump White House staff and cabinet are mostly male, although the President regularly consults a trio of women from the West Wing: the daughter and senior advisor Ivanka Trump, Councilor Kellyanne Conway and the deputy Sarah Huckabee Sanders Press.
"To say that the Republican party is only one group of men is inaccurate," said former White House leader Andy Surabian, pointing out that Trump had installed a woman, Ronna Romney McDaniel, to chair the Republican National Committee.
The ideological currents of conservatism have turned towards the defense of men. The self-proclaimed "human rights activists" who believe that federal laws and society oppress men have been widely read on the right. Jordan Peterson, a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto, has become world-renowned for his call to action for men.
Among the youngest curators, some of the most popular political figures are defenders of traditional gender norms, including commentators Ben Shapiro and Charlie Kirk. Shapiro signed with Fox News Channel to produce a new weekend program, while Kirk is close to the Trump family and has recently appeared on the cover of Weekly Standard, a conservative magazine.
"Good men have to teach their sons the art of manhood, or societies collapse," Shapiro writes in Newsweek this year.
It is indicative of the predominance of men in the GOP after Ford's allegations were reported in the Washington Post last week, the spotlight immediately turned to two women: Collins and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska).
"This should be a concern for everyone," said Senator Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii). "Why is it incumbent on women to worry that someone has made this kind of very credible allegation?"
Hirono has been particularly outspoken about the #MeToo movement and asks every candidate who comes before the five committees at which she sits, whether they have been accused of sexual harassment or aggression.
"I did not want it to roll under the rug," said Hirono. "I know it happens everywhere in the world of work, but these questions have never been asked before."
[Mazie Hirono’s blunt style makes her a favorite of liberals looking for a fighter]
The gap between the two sexes has increased since the election of Trump. The percentage of women who say they are in favor of the Republican Party is now 32%, compared to 35% in 2016 and 37% on average between 2010 and 2017, according to the Post-ABC survey.
Changes in partisanship coincide with a gender gap in Trump's popularity. The president's approval rating was on average 12 percentage points higher for men than for women, which is 45 to 32% in post-ABC surveys since April 2017.
"What we did in the 2016 election is the trade in high-growth, well-educated suburban counties for smaller, slower-growing cities and rural counties," said Republican pollster Whit Ayres. "It worked for Donald Trump in 2016, by the hair of his chin chin, but it's not a formula for long-term success."
Current attitudes about Trump have inspired a record number of women to run for election this year as Democrats. According to Kelly Dittmar, professor of political science at the Rutgers University Center for American Women and Politics, women make up 43 percent of Democratic candidates and 13 percent of Republican candidates. Many of these Democratic candidates shared their #MeToo stories on the campaign trail.
"The Democratic voters mobilized around the #MeToo movement in particular are likely to give priority to gender equity in their reasons for voting and are much more likely to be sensitive to this type of message than the Republican voters or Republican voters in general "Dittmar said, arguing that many Republican voters give priority to other issues.
Attending one of Trump's "Make America Great Again" noisy gatherings is to see that dozens of women have not allowed #MeToo's calculation to reduce their enthusiasm for Trump or their belief in it. tells them.
Melina Palken, 60, a former army doctor who raises cows and dairy cows, drove 16 hours between Elk City (Idaho) and Trump in Las Vegas on Thursday night. Asked about Kavanaugh's allegations, she said, "Oh, my God, we have to live under a rock so we do not know that man is the nicest person in his life and that he would never do anything such for women. "
Palken added, "He is pure as snow."
The Democratic Party has its own gender challenges. Charges of indictment were laid against President Bill Clinton in 1998 following his affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky, and several other women accused him of sexual harassment and harassment. 39; assault.
In addition, the confirmation hearings of the Judicial Committee of the Senate in 1991 for Judge Clarence Thomas, accused of sexual harassment by Anita Hill, were chaired by a Democrat and then by Sen. Joe Biden. A quarter of a century later, Biden, a former vice president and presidential candidate in 2020, continues to respond to the way in which he handled Hill's interrogation, which he claims to believe, by the committee exclusively male.
"At the national level, for a woman to be self-evident, it must be presumed that at least the essence of what she is talking about is real, that she is forgetting or not. no facts, whether or not it has been aggravated or improved over time, "Biden said last week in reference to both Hill and Ford.
Hill's burning experience on the witness stand pushed a wave of Democratic women to seek a position in 1992, determined to change the face of Washington – among them, Senator Patty Murray (D-Wash.) "In which was called "the year of the woman".
[Senate Judiciary chairman says he’ll give Kavanaugh accuser more time to decide whether to testify before committee]
Murray said Ford's treatment, if it testified, could provoke a repeat. "If she is victim of this hearing a second time in her life, there will be a huge reaction," Murray said.
While the Democrats added women to the Judiciary Committee, the Republican majority is composed of men and chaired by Senator Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), who sat on the panel at Thomas's auditions.
Garrett Ventry, a communications advisor who contributed to Grassley's response to Kavanaugh's allegations, abruptly resigned Friday night after NBC News investigated his own sexual harassment charges, which Ventry denies.
Republicans on the committee have considered charging an outside lawyer to question Ford, who is preparing to testify on Thursday.
"The fact that they are talking about trying to find a woman to question her suggests that they understand that the optics are not good," said Democratic strategist Anita Dunn. "But it's not a problem that you can outsource. It's much more fundamental and it has to do with attitude. They decided that this behavior was acceptable when they named this president. "
Katie Packer Beeson, a GOP strategist whose firm, Burning Glass Consulting, specializes in communicating with women, said Ford's possible hearing could pose risks to the party.
"If I were Republicans, I would identify the only person on the committee who is least likely to cause offense and hold them accountable for the interrogation," Beeson said. "Someone who does not show up as an old sexist guy and who can listen and hear what she has to say, but who also asks her about her memory."
Scott Clement contributed to this report.
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