GOP vowed to do better with women. What happened?
WASHINGTON — The Republican Party commissioned an autopsy on the 2012 presidential election, trying to figure out why Mitt Romney lost. One of the verdicts, already glaringly obvious to many: The party needed to make itself more attractive to women.
The 2016 race isn’t even over, and fed-up conservative women, saying the party failed to heed the lesson, are angrily conducting a vivisection of the campaign of Donald Trump and, pointedly, the party leaders who refused to disown him.
“I’m over it; I’m done. I’m tired of defending these people. You may not be a sexist, but you are OK with people who are,” said Brittany Pounders, a conservative writer and activist in Texas.
“I’m so mad at the Republican Party. I’m so mad,” said Kelleigh Murphy, a former Republican New Hampshire state representative, who recently switched her party registration to Independent to formalize her divorce from the GOP.
Trump’s candidacy is doing more than turning women away from the top of the ticket. He is alienating scores of them from the GOP more broadly, including some of the party’s most dedicated foot soldiers. It’s a dynamic that some, but not all, Republicans fear will inflict lasting damage on the party’s ability to attract female voters, a key constituency they already struggled with before the improbable rise of Trump.
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