For Many GOP Women, Party Loyalty Trumps Personal Affront
Locker room talk” has been the national buzz phrase of the last week; in the 2016 campaign, it’s not just videos that go viral, it’s talking points too.
“Do you have men in your family?” Mary Anne Huggins asked me when I brought up the now-infamous Donald Trump “Access Hollywood” tape. Huggins is the GOP chairwoman for Gaston County, North Carolina, and we were speaking in the county headquarters about the close race in her neck of the woods. “I hear that’s a lot of locker room talk,” she said. “Don’t you think that’s minor?”
People on Twitter and television and many in the Republican Party’s national leadership do not think the tape a minor issue, but most rank-and-file party members do; according to a Morning Consult/Politico poll conducted the day after the video’s release, 74 percent said that party officials should continue to support their nominee. That number, of course, includes Republican women — 73 percent of them said the party should still back Trump. Another Gaston County Republican I talked to, Lou Armstrong, has supported Trump since the primaries and said she didn’t like the tape, but it didn’t make a real difference because “everyone messes up and makes mistakes, and when you get in the public eye, they bring all that stuff up just because they’re making jabs.”
The strength of partisanship has proven more powerful than many could have imagined, as Republicans, including Republican women, decide that the agenda of their party matters above all else this election. That Morning Consult poll found that support for Trump was about equal between Republican men and women. And 82 percent of Republican women and 84 percent of Republican men are still supporting Trump, according to SurveyMonkey data from October 3-9.1
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/for-many-gop-women-party-loyalty-trumps-personal-affront/?ex_cid=2016-forecast
= new reply since forum marked as read
