Monday, November 12, 2018

The "Suburban Women Hate Trump" Myth

Establishment Republicans are now lying about Trump by spreading the falsehood that Trump turns off "suburban women," thus they vote Democrat.

Would you like to know the truth about that?

...The economically libertarian Republican Party of yesteryear also did not do so well with women. As  the Pew Research Center has shown, the Democratic presidential candidate outpolled the Republican candidate among women in every election since 1980. No Republican presidential candidate has obtained a majority of the women’s vote since 1996. The gender gap is just part of the political terrain, a consequence of the divergence of men and women’s lives, accelerated by declining marriage rates and various anti-family policies that ongoing Republican weakness only exacerbates....
Yes, the important part above is italicized and underlined.

Thomas Aquinas teaches that it is important to distinguish (distinguo).  Here's why.

...Trump won 52 percent of white women in 2016. And while he underperformed Clinton with college educated white women (51 percent vs. 44 percent), he got 61 percent of the share with the more numerous cohort of non-college educated white women. In Florida’s midterm races of 2018, things went similarly, with Ron DeSantis getting 57 percent of non-college educated white women....
So what's the cause of this?  Why does Trump poll so well with men--no matter the race--and non-college-educated white women?

...he has softened the economic libertarianism and counseled the need to take care of the middle class, including through his embrace of tariffs and immigration restrictions. His appeals to the “economically moderate, socially conservative” group worked. In the process, some of the more socially liberal economic conservatives—men and women alike—have left. But they have been replaced by a much larger group of nationalist-oriented voters in the middle. 

Thus, the Republicans are now a party of the middle class and the middle of the country, and the Democrats are a party of the extremes, the rich and the poor, whose bases are chiefly on the East and West Coasts....
Indeed.  This results from the 'death of fusionism' to which we referred a while back.  There we had this to say:

...There is very little cohesion between social/religious conservatives and free-market economic types; in many ways, their philosophies are at loggerheads.  There is some limited overlap, of course, foremost being "property rights" about which there is almost no dissent.  That said, almost any other topic will produce friction, then smoke, then live fire. ...
Trump understood that, whether through the tutelage of Bannon or on his own....but he's winning with that formula, as are other Republicans who use it.  Paul Ryan understood that too, which is why he pulled the ripcord.

Don't believe that Establishment Pubbies, who are now in the wilderness with the NeverTrump idiots.  Don't believe the lying Press.  Believe the facts, and make distinctions!!

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