How did Trump's misogyny become so appealing to the GOP base?

​​​​​One passage in Michelle Cottle's latest Times column, "The G.O.P. Has a Bad Men Problem," struck me with unusual force.

After noting that "in three Senate races — Georgia, Missouri and Pennsylvania — [the party] has leading candidates who have been accused of harassing, abusing, threatening or otherwise mistreating women" (Herschel Walker, Eric Greitens, and in Pa., Sean Parnell, who has the same amount of political experience as Walker, which is to say, none), Cottle wrote:

"The rot goes beyond the disrespect and mistreatment of women. Under Mr. Trump, the Republican Party has undergone a fundamental shift, swapping a fixation on character and morality and so-called Family Values for a celebration of belligerence, violence, and, yes, toxic masculinity."

The passage reminded me of just of how rapidly seismic the GOP's "fundamental shift" once was. At its molten core — soon to harden far more toxically — it took place in the span of a mere eight years, during which a general fixation on "character," as Cottle noted, first settled in.

In 1992, Republican-raised questions about Bill Clinton's character repeatedly intruded into the presidential campaign. In 1996, however, the traditional approach of avoiding character issues still held to some degree within the Republican Party, largely because self-aware conservatives knew that stone-castings could always boomerang on them.

Thus: "In my opinion, it is beneath Bob Dole to go after anyone personally," said Dole's running mate, Jack Kemp, while debating Vice President Al Gore in '96. The Los Angeles Times reported that Kemp's opinion and, by extension, Dole's, "bitterly disappointed Republican activists who believe an assault on Clinton’s character is the key to reversing Dole’s fortunes."

Four years later, those Republican activists had no cause to be bitterly disappointed. Vice-presidential candidate Dick Cheney "immediately sought to link Gore to President Clinton in the minds of voters," reported the Chicago Tribune. Said Cheney to roughly 2,000 delegates at the GOP nominating convention, "Mr. Gore tries to separate himself from his leader's shadow. But somehow, we will never see one without thinking of the other."

Everyone present, as well as everyone in the viewing audience, understood the thrust of Cheney's shadowy "character" shot.

From there on, the gloves were off. Character became Republicans' favorite flogging of, especially, Democratic presidential candidates. John Kerry they converted from a decorated war veteran to a weak, effete, dishonorable man of "hippie" inclinations. Barack Obama became an amoral, dope-smoking, overgrown teenager.

Hillary Clinton they tied to her husband and his "immoralities." Only grandfatherly Joe Biden stumped them; Republicans never did figure a workable angle to attack him on character, so they opted for assorted derisions of his age (about the same as Trump's) and his purported, slipping cognitive abilities. (Though not character related, emphatically "personal.")

Did it trouble Republicans that, in both of his presidential campaigns, Trump's "moral" character was roughly equivalent to Mussolini's — absent Il Duce's rudimentary intelligence — and that his superabundantly cast stones would come back to bite him? Not a bit. Not one damn bit. Indeed, the "character" issue remained central to both candidate and party.  

Trump's personal history of "harassing, abusing, threatening or otherwise mistreating women" became a political carrot to the Republican base. It reveled in his "belligerence, violence, and toxic masculinity," as Cottle observed of today's three GOP Senate candidates. This was a long way from the GOP's initial "character" assaults, but it was from the roots of those assaults that Trump's appeal malodorously blossomed and flourished.

Once obsessed with what it characterized as others' deplorable character, in Trump the GOP maintained its "character" fixation, but by embracing the raunchiest character of its own. The party simply, and perversely, flipped the script.

What stuns my historical memory was the Republican Party's rather rapid conversion from character avoidance to total indulgence of character attacks and, years later, even "celebrations" of Trump's lowest, genuinely unmanly traits of masculine toxicity.

The party now thrives as much on misogyny as racism.

How any woman or any women-respecting man can still vote Republican is beyond my deepest comprehension of the human drama. There's a sickness there that, though comprehensible on an intellectual level grounded in a 30-year history, is, to me at least, unintelligible in its psychic and emotional dysfunction.

Comments

[Peter G]

As a collector of interesting words and through the instant gratification of the Internet I discovered the meaning of the word ‘negging’. It originated with a particularly loathsome variety of male called pick up artists. Apparently it works. Trump is the master of this technique.

[Anne J]

And the misogyny is spilling over into public policy, hence the Texas pro stalker, pro vigilante law that allows harassment of anyone helping a woman get an abortion. But please stop blaming women. Perhaps republican voting women don't see these kinds of policies coming. And why is there never any acknowledgement of the women who vote against republicans but end up as collateral damage in their anti woman policies.

[Anne J]

Yes, it really is a man's world. Welcome to reality.

[Sherman]

"How any woman or any women-respecting man can still vote Republican is beyond my deepest comprehension of the human drama."

Stockholm syndrome, that's how.