Washington Post Columnist Criticizes Senator John Cornyn for Sexist Comments

Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin says Senator John Cornyn (R-Tex.) made sexist comments that portrayed “women as civilizers, cunningly trying to domesticate their spouses” after he was asked to elaborate on his relationship with President Donald Trump.

Cornyn described his relationship as “maybe like a lot of women who get married and think they’re going to change their spouse, and that doesn’t usually work out very well.” He added: “I think what we found is that we’re not going to change President Trump. He is who he is. You either love him or hate him, and there’s not much in between. What I tried to do is not get into public confrontations and fights with him because, as I’ve observed, those usually don’t end too well.”

To that, Rubin writes, “It is the stuff of 1950s comedies. It’s a variety of “benevolent sexism” — something that seems like a compliment but is really a put-down and effort to assign women to their traditional role.” She charges that Republicans have an “antiquated view of women.”

“They are either “monsters” or “nasty,” as President Trump labeled Democratic vice-presidential nominee Sen. Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.), or they are saintlike — juggling laundry, raising kids and taming ill-behaved husbands,” she observes. “A party whose standard-bearer has systematically insulted, denigrated and threatened women (“Lock her up!” Trump’s crowd shouted about Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, who was thetarget of a kidnapping and murder plot) is heading for potentially devastating losses in large part because women have been fleeing the GOP since Trump was elected.”

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Rubin also says that Cornyn’s claim that he disagreed with Trump “all along” doesn’t hold water because “silent dissent does not count if you vote for Trump, defend his egregious action, vote to acquit him in trial and pretend you did not hear his racist insults and bullying tweets.”

“Second, it is not even true,” she notes. “Cornyn has practically never opposed Trump. He voted consistently against solutions and supported the wall, even going so far as to accede to Trump’s raiding the defense budget to pay for it (a position that a plurality of Texas voters opposed). In the interview with the Star-Telegram, he falsely said he opposed the move. Likewise, he voted to repeal Obamacare and supports the lawsuit to invalidate the entire law. He nevertheless now claims to support protections for preexisting conditions.”

Rubin suggests that “women, suburban voters, seniors, Blacks and young people who have left the Republican Party” might vote Cornyn out of office considering the Republican Party’s record of losing voters.

For example, as recently as August pollsters have pointed out that Republicans are losing women to their Democratic competitors.

“When you ask millennial women who are likely voters, about 65, 68 percent would actually vote for a Democrat in the generic congressional race, so that puts them as base Democratic voters,” pollster Anna Greenberg, a partner at Greenberg, Quinlan, Rosner told Hill.TV at the time. 

“What we know is that in your coming of age years, from sort of your teens into your early 20s, have a profound, long-term impact on what your partisanship and voting patterns are for the rest of your life,” she continued. “So, not only in this moment are these millennial women heavily, heavily Democratic and heavily hostile to Trump, but it’s likely that they are going to sort of be the vanguard of, I think, the feminization of the Democratic Party.”

Cornyn Cornyn is running for reelection to a fourth term against Democratic nominee MJ Hegar. Hegar received the endorsement of former president Barack Obama last month.

Alan Herrera

Alan is a writer, editor, and news junkie based in New York.