19

A MEN’S DEN

As needs no saying, the major parties differ in discernible ways. While all generalizations are hazardous, some warrant a second hearing. Democrats are both more urban and urbane, an interplay of geography and personality. Republicans are typically older, more apt to be married, and ostensibly patriotic. While most Democrats are of European origin, each year sees them a smaller segment of the party, which is more prone to welcome colleagues of many races.

What’s left is the basic gender division, even if it has a range of gradations, from physical to temperamental. The Republican Party is more a men’s party. This overview holds, whether gauged by who occupies its leading positions or its sources of electoral support. The corollary is that the Democrats are more a women’s party, also by the measures just mentioned.

Let’s begin by positing that many women regard the GOP as their party and count themselves as its loyal supporters. According to CNN’s 2018 tally, fully 23,419,789 gave their ballots to its candidates. On its own, that’s not a negligible number.

The party has long had a roster of luminous women. At its head is Sarah Palin, who shared top billing on its 2008 ticket. A sample would include Michele Bachmann and Nikki Haley, Condoleezza Rice and Elizabeth Dole. Plus Ann Coulter, Laura Ingraham, and Kellyanne Conway. In earlier days, Oveta Culp Hobby, Margaret Chase Smith, and Phyllis Schlafly. Along with Sandra Day O’Connor, the first of her gender to serve on the Supreme Court.

Even so, this chapter’s title will remain in place. It will propose that men not only dominate the party, but put their sexual stamp on its posture and policies. Its final analysis will be that the GOP is essentially an enterprise owned and overseen by men.

It can be easily demonstrated that men are more evident in GOP circles, especially when compared with Democrats. This holds among both rank-and-file voters and those in leading positions. Two examples:

• Since Sandra Day O’Connor’s appointment, Republicans have filled nine Supreme Court seats. All went to men. Democrats had four vacancies. Of these, three went to women.

• For whatever reason, the Republican National Committee has not reported how many of its 2016 convention delegates were women. When the Democrats assembled, 61 percent were women.

• The table below shows the party divide on women’s shares of 584 national and state offices at the start of 2019. In theory, the two parties could have had identical sexual quotients. (Indeed, both mandate that for seats on their national committees.) So it’s appropriate to wonder why the ratios for Republican women span from less than half to below a third against those for Democrats. It’s not that the parties impose quotas or ceilings. Rather, the incongruities arise from a less tangible ambience.

If a sexual scale were wanted for the parties, we could do worse than use the final figures on the table. Republicans would rate a thirteen versus the Democrats’ thirty-seven, as their shares of three sets of seats. An inevitable question has to be: why are Republican women so far behind? In the 2019 House of Representatives, the ratio was more graphic. Of the 102 women in that chamber, 89 were Democrats, leaving a baker’s dozen Republicans. In politics as elsewhere, prevailing ratios affect career choices. On the GOP side, women who enter its intramural forays—say, a primary for a legislative seat—are still likely to be cast as pioneers.

That’s a view of the top. Equally important is the electorate itself: the tens of millions of citizens who, through varied activities, decide the postures of the parties and who will occupy public offices. Here the best template will be the 2018 midterm elections. At the top of state tickets, seventy-one governorships and Senate seats were at stake. Beneath them were the 435 seats for the House of Representatives, for which Democrats fielded 432 candidates, while the GOP settled for 397.

The table below gives gender breakdowns for the parties’ total votes in House of Representatives races. The numbers come from synthesizing two sources. The first was the Clerk of the House of Representatives, who adds up all the parties’ votes cast in 2018 contests. Those totals are in the middle of the table. (Minor parties received another 1,947,488 votes.)

The second source was the exit survey sponsored by CNN, in which citizens leaving the polls were asked if they would provide information about themselves. The first and most obvious item was their gender. The CNN survey had a large sample, and it is generally accepted as the best replica we have of everyone who voted. Its findings for men and women were applied to the actual electorate.

We can start by synthesizing these six numbers and hazarding some possible conclusions. Here are a few:

• If we analyze only the men, it turns out that 1,833,934 more of them voted for Republicans than favored Democrats. This is not a large gap. But when we look at the women, 11,577,637 more of them chose Democratic candidates. That’s a partisan divide six times wider than for the men.

• Parsed another way, the Republican pool has 4,120,331 more men than women. While this is a noticeable number, it’s not really large enough to stamp the GOP as a “men’s” party. But on the Democratic side, women have a heavy majority, providing 58 percent of its votes. Arithmetically, they outnumber Democratic men by 9,154,578. It may be too soon to call the Democrats a “women’s” party. As of 2019, they still held only 37 percent of its prime seats.

• The last last time most men voted Democratic was in 1964, when Lyndon Johnson smothered Barry Goldwater. Since then, they have been there for every Republican, from Richard Nixon to Donald Trump. The last time most women rallied around a Republican was in 1988, when 51 percent of them backed George H. W. Bush. After that, their most recent high was 48 percent in 2004, in reelecting the second Bush. Given these statistical declines, there is scant chance that women will ever again vote Republican in the same ratio as men.

CNN polls also asked voters about their household arrangements. Here, too, responses were revealing. Compared with Democrats, Republican women are more likely to be married. Overall, this would make them at least somewhat older and settled into a domestic pattern. (Of course, exceptions abound.) In 2018, Republican wives who had resident husbands outstripped single women by a margin of 80 percent. (For Democratic women, the married-single ratio was fifty-fifty.)

In this century, we are expected to presume that spouses have independent minds. So if or when a pair vote the same way, these will be independent choices or express an interactive influence. That noted, recasting CNN’s findings shows a degree of connubial disagreement. Among Republican husbands as a group, fully 17 percent had wives who voted Democratic in 2018. By way of contrast, only 8 percent of Democratic wives had Republican husbands. Put another way, Democratic men seem to have more in common with their wives than Republican husbands do with theirs.

The most pronounced GOP paucity is single women. Less than a third of them voted Republican. This group subsumes all who haven’t married, either lastingly or thus far, with those who are widowed or divorced. In the 2018 midterms, single women comprised 18 percent of the overall electorate; in marital terms, it’s the fastest-growing group. Nor is it surprising that so many single women eschew the GOP. One cause, certainly, is their preference for the right to choose abortion, which only the Democrats are sponsoring. A related reason is their commitment to serious careers. If Republicans don’t openly oppose such aspirations, it’s not an option they champion. One more datum: among single Democrats, for every one hundred women, there are only sixty-four men. This doesn’t bode well for intraparty pairing, dating, and mating.

Many commentators opined that Donald Trump, by his campaign and conduct, would alienate women. This may have seemed self-evident, given the bellicosity of his pronouncements, not to mention his gloating boasts of assaults.

But that wasn’t the case on Election Day in 2016. In that year, 29,797,365 women voted for him, not a small number. More salient, this was only 1,424,567 short of their turnout for Mitt Romney four years earlier. This must mean that for every 1,000 women who supported a staid and stolid Mormon, fully 954 also filed a ballot for a raucous Trump. And they did so well aware of his attitudes toward their gender.

The Pew Research Center is quite possibly our most imaginative polling operation. Because they put a lot of thought into their questions, we hear more than opinions on personalities and issues. The Pew researchers offer us insights into elusive emotions that are rarely voiced aloud. (This is all the more arresting, since the founding Pew family felt that such inquiries were a left-wing plot.)

Below is a question that the Pew Center asked a sample of Americans towards the end of 2018. A first reaction might be: why would anyone bother to open a subject like this? It’s not as if manliness is a campaign issue or on legislative agendas. So I’ll only report my own reaction. I found it helpful in expanding our understanding of the political parties. Here (slightly abridged) was the Pew question, and replies collated by sex and party affiliation.

Is it good or bad when people look up to men who are manly or masculine?1
Saying “Good”	Republicans	Democrats
Men	85%	56%
Women	73%	45%
Saying “Bad”	Republicans	Democrats
Men	15%	42%
Women	24%	53%

As in all large-scale surveys, the question was simply presented to the respondents, with no elaborations or explanations. It’s quite likely those answering had differing definitions, since manly and masculine can be construed in many ways. So it was left to each person to apply his or her own understanding of the key words, like whether to focus on physical aspects or less tangible expressions. A range might run from sexual stamina to battlefield valor, from airing perilous opinions to being loyal to a spouse. And it’s possible that Republicans and Democrats ascribe different meanings to the words.

The most graphic finding is that so many Republicans of both sexes think highly of men they deem manly or masculine. That almost three-quarters of Republican women want their men to have that fiber isn’t far below the number of men who hold that view about themselves. One inference might be that Republican women believe manly men should take charge and hence consent to male dominance in their party.

Once this topic is on the table, several issues arise. For example, if some men rate high on manliness, we might conclude that others have a lower standing. Even that premise pokes a hornet’s nest. It’s wisest to pause before describing men who are putatively less manly as feminine. Considering some kind of continuum makes sense; even better, a multidimensional matrix. But this is a topic for another book.

With Democratic men, we are seeing something new and illuminating. Only 56 percent accept a depiction that for eons has been applied to their gender. Today, more than a few are willing to avow they are feminists.

As was seen among the 2018 votes cast for Democratic slates, 58 percent came from women and 42 percent from men. So these men seem willing to remain with a party where they are in the minority. And not just in statistical charts. In meetings, rallies, and other assemblages, they see themselves outnumbered, if not outranked, by the other sex. In 2018, Democrats ran 183 women for the House of Representatives, up from 120 just two years earlier.

Fewer Republican men are seeing seats going to the other sex. Of the women in major offices who were depicted earlier, Republicans held 35 seats to Democrats’ 112. In the competition for candidacies, it could be that many Republican women are forbearing voluntarily, rather than being pushed aside. Recall their level of concern for sustaining the masculinity of men.

By way of contrast, less than half of Democratic women cast manliness in a good light. Here it would be illuminating to learn what induced this response. Anger over assaults and harassment are much in the air. Indeed, personal histories may be tingeing perceptions of politics. This and more noted, insofar as Democratic women want men to figure in their lives, apparently they look for other qualities in them.

In the past, building a business or a having an ascending career sufficed as a manly credential. Enough middle-class men could claim such success, even if it was attained inside offices, rather than working out in all weathers. One archetype was Herbert Hoover, an engineer turned millionaire. Or Dwight Eisenhower, an administrative general rather than a battlefield warrior. Mitt Romney, who made a fortune by buying and selling other people’s companies, was judged man enough. That changed with the party’s next candidate, who cleared the field, not least by disparaging the masculinity of his rivals.

At a rally a month before the 2016 vote, Trump made a brief but telling pitch for the masculine vote. As is widely known, much concern has been voiced about cranial injuries incurred by football players. Steps have been taken to ban especially damaging plays, require more protective helmets, and keep disabled players from returning to the field. For those who know and care, the key condition in question is called chronic traumatic encephalopathy.

In truth, we know the kind of spectacle lots of fans want. It is a rough-and-tumble, tearing ligaments, cracking bones, plus perpetual pain, not to mention ravaged brains. Athletes enter the arenas knowing the risks, which is one reason why they get outsized salaries, at least for their playing years.

Trump began by reminding his fellow fans of the sport’s less regulated days. “You used to see those tackles, and it was incredible to watch.” But, he continued, not so today: “Uh oh, got a little ding on the head? No, no, you can’t play for the rest of the season! Football’s become soft, like our country’s become soft.”

Here he was appealing to a demographic that sociologists have been slow to identify. More precisely, it is fans who voice their virility by cheering the smashing of skulls. If he could bring even a fraction of them to the polls, they would far outvote citizens who worry about, let alone can spell, chronic traumatic encephalopathy.

Policing, Prisons, and Pain. The Republican formula for deterring crime is punishment. In particular, it favors modes of incarceration so physically and mentally painful that inmates who are released won’t want to risk being jailed again. Rehabilitation is seen as feminine, as are community policing and niceties about rights. States with heavy Republican voting correlate quite strongly with high incarceration rates. (For the statistically inclined, it’s +0.523.) Hence, too, there is Republican disdain for Black Lives Matter sentiment, as such solicitude can force police to keep their firearms stowed away. Were a poll to be taken, it would be intriguing to see how many Republicans prefer that Blue Lives Matter take precedence.

Insouciance about Health. Republicans only grudgingly acquiesced to seat belt laws, another incursion of the “nanny state.” Playing it safe is feminine; if women want to buckle up, fine. But real men don’t want to be tied down. Republicans object to forcing fruits and vegetables on school menus. A way to tutor middle-schoolers about liberty is to cast pizzas and sugary soda as rights. Counting calories is feminine. Robust Republican voting correlates with high obesity rates (+0.702).2

Nature: To Be Used and Subdued. Our nation was wrested from wilderness, and that struggle hasn’t ceased. Fossil fuels are our current frontier. Slicing mountains, fracturing farmland, and allowing chemical runoff are masculine modes of releasing energy. Solar panels and wind turbines are feminine. Roustabouts in oil fields or offshore rigs are Republican archetypes, not bespectacled scientists poring over models. Moreover, manly labor deserves diversions. Like snowmobiling through national parks or muscular vehicles on coastal dunes. Even non-rural Republicans opt for pickup trucks. Electric cars are feminine.

Carnal License. Republicans’ preferred religions are deeply moral about sex. For young people, abstinence should be the sole instruction. Or when that warning isn’t heeded, the next step is to make all pregnancies end in birth. Which leads to another correlation with high Republican voting. Those states also lead in teenaged births, the great majority of which are not accompanied by marriage (+0.698). How might this be masculine? It takes two to make a conception. (Apparently, abstaining isn’t working.) The GOP flourishes where men parade their prowess, even if it leaves women with the consequences. Still, high teen births in Republican states show moral consistency: with the abortion option withheld, one outcome is more early motherhood.

America needs to have a strong military presence in other parts of the world. (Nebraska)

As a Christian, I can’t in good conscience identify as a Democrat. (Alabama)

I believe that Republicans are more logical, and tend to be kinder and more caring. (West Virginia)

Liberals say you’re too stupid to make a decision, unless you’re in the elite. (Texas)

I’m a Republican because I believe other countries should
respect our sovereign borders.

I love God and support school vouchers because most of the public schools are failing. (Indiana)

Guns aren’t the issue in horrible shootings, but the mental health of the individuals who use them. (New York)

Excessive taxation for corporations pushes jobs overseas. (Virginia)

Liberals will allow more radical Muslims into this country. See what is happening in France and the United Kingdom. (Pennsylvania)