Trump’s crusade to alienate a record number of college-educated white women voters seems likely to succeed. A vicious war waged by congressional Republicans against the first woman president may do for women what unscrupulous attacks against the nation’s first black president appear to have done for nonwhite voters: moved most of them beyond the GOP’s reach.
Republican attacks on a new president will take place while the party’s own factions are busy clawing at the broken husk of the GOP. It will likely be an energizing time for the party base, which will want revenge for an election it has been told is rigged. Fox News and Breitbart should be lively.
But many old-school conservatives will be on the outside looking in at the madness. And suburban married women, a Republican constituency, and even some of their college-educated Republican husbands, may find themselves acquiring an unexpected affinity for pantsuits.