10/11/2016

WhyDonaldTrump'sAccessHollywoodtapewasthelaststrawforPaulRyanandtheGOPQuartz

A political historian explains why

Trumps tape could destroy the
GOP
Heather Cox Richardson

8 hours ago

The man who killed the Republican party. (Reuters/Mike Segar)

Republican politicians looked the other way when Donald Trump suggested that
Mexicans were rapists. They ignored him as he made slurs against African Americans,
threatened Muslims, mocked the disabled, and insulted prominent female personalities.
These attacks were more extreme than the kind that Republican of cials generally
partake in. But they were of a piece with the narrative that the GOP has used to win
voters for generations.
The release of the Access Hollywood tape in which Trump boasts of forcing himself on
women, however, has proved to be too much for members of the Republican party to bear

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women, however, has proved to be too much for members of the Republican party to bear
precisely because it runs counter to the central GOP narrative. And the fallout looks as
if it may destroy the modern Republican project as we know it.
For a generation, the Republican party has been held together by a simple story that
activists laid out in the 1950s. Coming out of World War II, President Dwight D.
Eisenhowers Republican Party backed government policies that promoted equality of
opportunityprojects such as education, infrastructure, government regulation, and
social welfare. These policies were both effective and enormously popular. But wealthy
men loathed government regulation and the taxes that an active government required.
Calling themselves conservatives, they started a movement to undermine the idea that
promoting equality of opportunity was the proper role for the American government.
They had a problem: Most Americans liked the government programs. So to push their
agenda, movement conservatives rejected fact-based evidence and instead advanced a
very simple narrative: hard-working white American men were under siege by
minorities, women, organized workers, and special interests who wanted government
handouts. Government policies that promoted equal opportunity were the very opposite
of fair. They redistributed wealth from hard-working white men to lazy minorities.
Central to the portrayal of the conservative American individualist was the idea of his
morality. The ideal conservative man worked hard, wanted (and needed) nothing from
the government, and loved and protected his wife and children. This paternalistic image
offered followers a return to an idealized past, assuring the people who were falling
behind in the modern economy that there was a simple cause for their distress. If only
the government could be purged from the in uence of black people, minorities, lazy
workers, and unfeminine women who demanded that the government help them get
equal access to schools and jobs, good American men could get back to their traditional
role: taking care of their children and their loving, homemaking wives.
Richard Nixon welcomed this narrative into the Republican Party when he won voters by
embracing the Southern Strategy and rallying the Silent Majority of hardworking white
men who were trying to support their families while shiftless protesters mobbed in the
streets. Then, in 1980, Ronald Reagan won the White House by continuing to draw upon
this idealized image of the conservative male American. He warned voters against the
mythical welfare queena lazy black woman who stole tax dollars to live in luxury
and promised to defend regular, hardworking Americans against such leeches.

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and promised to defend regular, hardworking Americans against such leeches.

This image has red up poor and working-class Republican voters ever since the Reagan
era, even as movement conservatives passed legislation that undermined working
Americans security by sucking wealth upward. It was this narrative that enabled
extremists to capture the GOP in the 1990s, dismissing traditional Republicans as RINOs
Republicans in Name Only. Ever since, the movement conservative narrative has
dominated the Republican Party. Anyone calling for the government to promote racial or
gender equality is, according this script, a threat to America.
And so when Trump called Mexicans criminals and rapists, he simply took the movement
conservative narrative to its next logical step. If minorities and women who demand
equality are a threat to the nation, then all good Americans must work to purge them
from the country. When he mocked the disabled, attacked Muslims, and called working
women pigs and sluts, he was simply stripping the genteel veneer from the same story
that movement conservatives had long advanced.
But Trumps tape about forcing himself on women undercuts this narrative. It affronts
the men who could back his attacks on people of color, minorities, and organized
workersin part because they justi ed this stance as necessary in order to safeguard
their wives and daughters.
The vicious crudeness evident in Trumps tape strips away such paternalistic excuses and
reveals his criminal lust for dominance. It is an attack on the Republican narrative that
hit home for men who had otherwise bought the movement conservative line. Many
Republican voters could still think of themselves as decent Americans defending
traditional values when they supported a man who talked of criminal immigrants or
deporting Muslims. But a sexual predator who sees women as his prey is a direct threat
to the traditional image of a man whose role is to cherish and protect.

And so the release of the Access Hollywood tape was the turning point for many
Republican men because it undercut their image of what their ideology meant all along.
Trump wasnt about respecting and defending the traditional family after all; he was a
rich thug who felt entitled to grab whatever he wanted.
This has given an opening for establishment Republicans who recognize that Trump is a
loose cannon to toss him overboard as they could not when he was simply taking their

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loose cannon to toss him overboard as they could not when he was simply taking their
own narrative about minorities, working women, and organized workers to the extreme.
In fact, House speaker Paul Ryan used this contradiction to try to shore up the
movement conservative vision when he tweeted after the tapes release: Women are to
be championed and revered, not objecti ed.
Ryans tweet, and Trumps continued free fall, suggests that the movement conservative
narrative may nally be dying. The release of the tape may force regular Republican
voters to face the reality that the movement conservatives demonization of minorities,
organized workers, and women who demanded equality was never really about
protecting hardworking American families. It was about creating a ruling class whose
members could commit crimes against less powerful Americans with impunity. And so
the vulgar boasting of a criminal thug may nally force the GOP to confront the ugly
fantasy that has dominated its politics for a generation, and shock American politics
back to decency.
We welcome your comments at ideas@qz.com.
BATHROOM BILL

The US has passed a law to make

baby changing stations available
in mens bathrooms
Annalisa Merelli

6 hours ago

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Potty equality. (Reuters/Heiko Junge)

Anyone whos ever tried to change a babys dirty diaper in a public bathroom knows its a
gross nightmare when you dont have a changing table. Now, a US bill signed on Oct. 7
will equip both mens and womens bathrooms in federal buildings with changing
stations.
The Bathrooms Accessible in Every Situation (BABIES) Act, only affects bathrooms in
government-owned or government- nanced buildings like courthouses and public
libraries. But it is a rst step toward reducing the indignity that parents frequently face
when trying to care for their babies in bathroom stalls. US federal law previously did not
require changing tables anywhere.
The act is also meaningful because it applies to both mens and womens bathrooms,
nally addressing an archaic form of sexism: Since changing tables are more common in
womens bathrooms, childcare outside the home can become womens work by necessity.
The BABIES act has received bipartisan support. David N. Cicilline, the Democratic
congressman who sponsored it, wrote on his site that the act is important to ensure
that [bathrooms] are as open, as accessible, and as family-friendly as possible.

Its not the rst attempt to put changing stations in mens bathrooms. In 2015, actor
Ashton Kutcher launched a petition on Change.org, asking stores to make changing
tables accessible to both men and women. His initiative inspired a bill, sponsored by
Brad Hoylman in the same year and currently under examination, that would mandate
adding changing tables to all publicly available restrooms (for instance, restaurants and
theaters) in New York City, regardless of gender.

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