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You Are What Your Record Says You Are

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US Republican Senator from New Hampshire Kelly Ayotte speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in National Harbor, Maryland, on March 15, 2013. AFP PHOTO/Nicholas KAMM (Photo credit should read NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP/Getty Images)

Above: Kelly Ayotte, International Woman of Integritude, and Erstwhile Supporter-But-Not-Endorser of Donald Trump

As Rebecca Traister says, Trump’s misogyny is the logical endpoint of longstanding policy goals:

Republicans are not shocked; they’re scared. Donald Trump is losing and they are beginning to understand that his loss is going to expose them, not simply to partisan defeat, but as a party that has been covert in its cohesion around the very biases that he makes coarse and plain.

Trump’s attitudes about women are not different from the attitudes that have been supported by the contemporary Republican Party via their legislative agenda. Many of the very politicians who led the stampede away from Trump this weekend — from House Speaker Paul Ryan and Utah representative Jason Chaffetz to former Republican presidential candidate John McCain and Trump’s running mate, Mike Pence — have dedicated themselves in recent years to shutting down Planned Parenthood, thus preventing women from controlling their own reproduction. The 2012 Republican presidential candidate, Mitt Romney, who said he was “offended [and] dismayed” by the Trump tape, vetoed a Massachusetts bill that would have provided rape victims access to emergency contraception, told college students to hetero-marry early and opposed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. These are politicians who regularly vote against the Paycheck Fairness Act and oppose paid-family-leave legislation and the raising of the minimum wage that would make millions of women more economically stable. Chaffetz voted against the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act in 2013, while Pence, Ryan, and Chaffetz co-sponsored a bill that would have limited the definition of rape to include only “forcible” assaults; Pence signed an Indiana law that requires funerals or cremations for fetuses, tried to ban women from aborting because of fetal genetic abnormalities, suggested that legalizing gay marriage would lead to “societal collapse,” and in 1997 wrote a letter to the Indianapolis Star decrying the harm done to children when mothers go to work and rely on day care.

Which is worse: Threatening to grab someone by the pussy or forcing someone to carry and give birth to a baby that is the result of rape? Which is worse: Popping a Tic Tac in preparation for forced extramarital kissing with a stranger or actively discouraging women’s full participation in the workforce? The answer is: None of these is worse; they are all of a kind. The view of women as yours to control via political power, star power, or simply patriarchal power, is what Republicans — not just Trump, but lots of Republicans — have been doing for years as they work to reduce reproductive-rights access and reinstall women in early marriage and traditional hetero homes where their competitive, independent, threatening power might be better contained.

And — as the Republican indifference to Trump’s assertion that innocent African-Americans should be subject to a de facto lynching earlier the same day as the released tapes that created a crisis within the party indicates — it’s worth noting the Republicans who un-endorsed Trump or re-worded their endorsements of Trump were perfectly OK with his white nationalism and authoritarianism before the recordings of the Yukking It Up About My History Sexual Assault With One of the Idiot Bush Sons Hour tapes surfaced:

Hours before we learned of Trump’s boasts about grabbing women “by the pussy,” the Republican nominee affirmed his false belief that the Central Park 5—five teenagers, four of them black and one Latino, convicted on charges of attacking and raping a 28-year-old white woman, all five since exonerated by DNA evidence—were guilty.* “They admitted they were guilty,” Trump said. “The police doing the original investigation say they were guilty. The fact that that case was settled with so much evidence against them is outrageous. And the woman, so badly injured, will never be the same.”

The same Republican leaders who rushed to condemn Trump for his remarks on a hot mic were silent about his continued attacks on these men, which stretch back to the original event in 1989, when he placed an incendiary ad in New York City newspapers against the then-teenagers. “Bring back the death penalty. Bring back our police!” said Trump. “[M]uggers and murderers … should be forced to suffer and, when they kill, they should be executed for their crimes. They must serve as examples so that others will think long and hard before committing a crime or an act of violence.”

Republicans didn’t say anything because Trump wasn’t attacking Republicans. The ground didn’t shift for the GOP nominee until he did. His “grab them by the pussy” comments don’t just threaten his own bid at the White House; they threaten the whole Republican political apparatus. They undermine party enthusiasm. They give millions of Republican-voting women a reason to stay home. And what happens if they do? Suddenly, the House and Senate are at risk. Suddenly, Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell are leaders of a minority party.

Somehow, Republicans began to discover that Trump was violating their alleged principles when his bigotry took a specific form that was inconsistent with their federal electoral viability. It is truly the party of Paul Ryan.

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