The not-so-mysterious reason so many GOP women like Trump

Crossposted from DemocraticDiva.com

Donald_Trump_hair
Not for his looks, for sure.

On my post-vacay trek to the gym I decided to watch Anderson Cooper as I rode the exercise bike. The top story of the night was, of course, the GOP primary and CNN’s latest poll that has Donald Trump in the lead plus favorable ratings, including by gender:

But there is no gender gap among Republicans on favorable views of Trump: 60% of Republican women voters have a positive impression as do 57% of GOP men. Outside the Republican Party, women are less apt to hold a favorable view of Trump, just 17% of women voters who are independents or Democratic leaners see him favorably, compared with 29% of non-Republican male voters.

That’s a startlingly high favorable rating among women, though not really, as the video from CNN’s Randi Kaye demonstrates. Iowa Trump supporter Heather Halterman feels that Trump’s ugly comments about various women are not degrading and are secondary to her vague conception of the “good ideas” he has for a country “going down the drain” and his promise to protect her two sons from the (again, vague) threat posed to them by immigrants from south of the border. Halterman also likes Trump’s “pro-Israel” stance (who knows why?) and some non-specific things he has said about the tax code and building up the military.

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There is no “Republican establishment” and the GOP Presidential slate proves it

Crossposted from DemocraticDiva.com

gop debate

Nothing drives me up the wall these days more than pundits (including many on the putative “liberal” cable news network) engaging in endless, pointless dissections of the GOP and pondering if the “Tea Party fringe” is winning over the “moderate, establishment wing” or vice versa. Stop it, pundits. There is no “Republican establishment” today. None. If there (arguably) was one in the past it does not exist anymore. I’ll let Grover Norquist, writing at The American Spectator, explain it to you:

So where does this narrative of liberal Republican leaders battling the Tea Party grassroots come from?

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Grand Old Misogyny

You’ve got to pity Rand Paul after Thursday night’s Fox “Fair and Balanced And Totally Not An Arm Of The GOP!” News Republican Presidential Primary debate. This is not just because of the embarrassing scuffle with Chris Christie. No, it’s more to do with Rand failing to be the natural successor to his dad Ron Paul as the “Ron Paul of 2016”. Paul père was never expected to win the nomination in either 2008 or 2012 but he did capture the enthusiasm of a sizable enough number of libertarian (mostly) dudebros to make a showing in both those primaries and dot the landscape with silly hand-painted looking signs. This was a sure path to Ron Paul’s lucrative retirement hawking financial scams.

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