Trump Has a Women Problem. These Senators Aren’t
Helping.
To be
in today’s Republican Party requires a particularly gross form of
self-abasement.
Ms.
Cottle is a member of the editorial board.
- Oct. 30, 2020, 11:56 a.m. ET
Even with everything we know about
President Trump’s deep and abiding disrespect for women, it was disconcerting
to see him treat a U.S. senator — from his own party, no less — like a dog.
At a rally in Arizona on Wednesday, Mr.
Trump made clear his impatience with sharing the spotlight, no matter how
briefly, with Martha McSally, who is struggling in her race against Mark Kelly,
a Democrat. “Martha, just come up fast. Fast. Fast,” he called from
the stage, rotating his hand for emphasis. “Come on. Quick. You got one minute!
One minute, Martha! They don’t want to hear this, Martha. Come on. Let’s go.
Quick, quick, quick. Come on. Let’s go.”
Perhaps more
disheartening than the president’s imperious call was the senator’s scurrying
to his side. “I’m coming!” she cried, grinning brightly and giving him a jolly
elbow bump. “Thank you, President Trump!”
Thank you? For what,
exactly? For humiliating her in front of her constituents? Or maybe for
reminding women everywhere that to be in today’s Republican Party requires a
particularly gross form of self-abasement: choking down an endless stream of
disrespect, vulgarity and outright misogyny to prove that you can hang with the
Big Boys in all their retrograde, machismo-soaked Trumpiness?
No wonder the Republican Party is
facing a gender gap the size of the Mariana Trench.
Ms. McSally wasn’t the only one having
a rough Wednesday. Senator Kelly Loeffler, locked in a tight race in Georgia,
stumbled into her own Trump-themed episode of shame. Asked about
the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape — you know the one, in which Mr. Trump
boasts about grabbing unsuspecting women in unacceptable places — Ms. Loeffler
bobbed and weaved and, when pressed, insisted she was “not familiar with that.”
Hear that? It’s the
sound of an entire nation guffawing at the absurdity of this claim. Or maybe
the senator really is that clueless — the possibility of which should give
Georgia voters pause.
Although in a
slightly different category, let’s not leave out the awkward Wednesday moment
had by Senator Susan Collins of Maine. In her final debate with Sara Gideon, a
Democrat whom polls show running slightly ahead of Ms. Collins, the senator
refused to say whether Mr. Trump deserved to be re-elected. “I’m not getting
into presidential politics,” she demurred.
Ms. Collins has declined to officially
endorse Mr. Trump this cycle, and she will not say whether she will be voting
for him.
Such dodges are
classic Collins, characteristic of the knots into which she often ties herself
in an effort to not upset the party’s Trump-loving base while clinging to her
reputation as an independent-minded moderate. It’s not that the senator is
unwilling to call out the president when he says or does something she finds
“inappropriate,” “improper” or just plain “wrong.” Her many and varied
expressions of concern and disappointment have, in fact, become a running joke
in political circles. But for all of Ms. Collins’s public agonizing, at key
moments she has had Mr. Trump’s back, including her votes to confirm Supreme
Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh and to acquit the president of impeachment
charges. Post-acquittal, she assured Americans that Mr. Trump had learned “a pretty big lesson”
from the experience — a comment so ludicrous she promptly tried to walk it back.
Many voters in Ms. Collins’s blue home
state do not appear impressed with these gymnastics. Her popularity has
plummeted in the Trump era, with women voters turning
especially hard on her.
It’s no mystery why these senators are
loath to cross the president. Mr. Trump expects a certain level of
obsequiousness from, well, everyone. Those who fail to lick his boots with
sufficient frequency or enthusiasm risk incurring his wrath and that of his
impassioned fans. (Just ask Gretchen Whitmer, Michigan’s Democratic governor,
how unpleasant that can be.) Indeed, when Ms. Collins opposed rushing through
the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to fill the Supreme Court seat left vacant
by the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Mr. Trump trashed her
on Twitter. Whether
this will, on balance, help or hurt Ms. Collins’s balancing act will be clear
soon enough.
Certainly, women senators are not the
only Republican officials compelled to sacrifice their integrity and
self-respect to keep Mr. Trump happy. (Two words: Lindsey Graham.) But for a
party that for years has been grappling with a serious woman problem — both
getting women elected and, more broadly, getting women voters to support its candidates
— the sight of women senators constantly debasing themselves for this president
sends an unfortunate message. Voters outside of the Trumpian bubble, including
many of those “suburban housewives” already uneasy with the president’s
methods, are unlikely to be won over by such displays.
Mr. Trump’s political
brand has been built on a foundation of white grievance and sexist masculinity.
He has worked to drag the entire party down that path with him. Republicans
will be working to repair this damage long after he is gone.
