Republicans have been desperate to derail Donald Trump's presidential campaign because they fear it will become a trainwreck for the entire party. And they think they finally found the means, in The Donald's blatantly misogynistic rants at Fox "News" propagandist Megyn Kelly, during the first official GOP
Freak Show presidential debate. Republicans who so proudly tout their party's persistent efforts to deny women's reproductive choice or equal pay or protection against rape and other forms of misogynistic violence are finding it very convenient to concern troll Trump's more honest and open form of repulsiveness. And let's face it, Trump doesn't l
ead the GOP primary polls because he's a decent human being. Grassroots Republicans like him for who he is, as he is. Republican insiders prefer to be able to pretend that they aren't what they are.
Joan Walsh nails it:
So many in the media are shocked at the rise of Trump and the piggishness he represents. I can’t understand why. From the dawn of the Obama administration some of us have experienced the surge of racism and misogyny personally.
Within days of Obama’s inauguration, I had former House Majority Leader Dick Armey tell me on “Hardball,” after I’d criticized Rush Limbaugh, “I’m so damn glad you can never be my wife, because I surely wouldn’t have to listen to that prattle from you every day.” A lot of folks on the left were outraged; on the right, they laughed and cheered Armey.
One of those who laughed was Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace, a debate moderator along with Kelly Thursday night. On conservative Mike Gallagher’s radio show, Wallace said he found feminist anger over Armey’s insult “pretty funny.”
And she cites other examples, such as personally being the recipient of misogynistic swipes from GOP and conservative stalwarts such as Gordon Liddy and John Kasich. And then there's the supreme hypocrite, Erick Erickson, who banished Trump from the RedState gathering. Walsh reminds us that Erickson once called Texas Democrat Wendy Davis "Abortion Barbie," and Michelle Obama a "Marxist Harpy Wife," and called the 2012 Democratic Convention "the Vagina Monologues." Even mainstream Republican Jeb Bush couldn't manage to criticize Trump for the ugliness of his comments, rather he focused on how Trump might hurt the party. Priorities. But even that was stronger than anything Marco Rubio could manage, refusing, when asked, to say anything at all.
The reality is that Donald Trump isn't a fringe sideshow, and while Bush is right that Trump is a threat to the Republican brand, it's not in the way he wants people to think. Trump's popularity among Republican voters reveals Republican ideology for what it is, and Republican insiders have for years played to and fueled it. What Republican insiders fear about Donald Trump isn't his own ugly misogyny, it's that he is revealing their own.