"It amazes me that other networks seem to treat me so much better than @FoxNews," Donald Trump tweeted on Sunday. "I brought them the biggest ratings in history, & I get zip!" Trump may not quite understand why Fox might be tough on him, but it's for the same reason that the Republican Party's leaders, conservative activists, and his primary opponents are trying to find ways to undermine him. The idea of him winning the presidential nomination-or even just staying in the race for an extended period of time-is horrifying for them. And every couple of weeks, Trump does or says something outrageous and they say to themselves, "OK, now this time we've really got him."
So when Trump mixed it up a little with Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly at the first debate last Thursday, then followed it up by seeming to imply that Kelly asked him tough questions because she was having her period, you could almost hear Republicans jump up in anticipation. "You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes, there was blood coming out of her-wherever," Trump said in an interview with CNN. You can decide for yourself what the "wherever" meant, but he also called her "a lightweight" and retweeted a fan calling her a "bimbo."
Naturally, Trump is refusing to apologize or even give an inch, because that's not how he rolls. And just as he claimed after saying that Mexican immigrants are criminals and rapists that he'd win the Hispanic vote, he's now saying that the ladies can't get enough of him. Asked on "Face the Nation" about whether he had hurt himself with women voters, he said, "I will be phenomenal to the women."
But Republicans everywhere are speaking out against him, and over the weekend he was disinvited from the RedState Gathering, a convention of activists organized by the blogger and pundit Erick Erickson at which other candidates will be appearing. Erickson wrote that he banned Trump from the event because "there are just real lines of decency a person running for President should not cross," so offended was he by the misogyny implicit in Trump's remark. This was a truly inspiring turnaround for Erickson, a man who tweets things like, "Turned on twitter today and there was a barrage of angry feminists upset with me telling them to get in the kitchen and learn to cook." In fact, Erickson once got taken to task by Megyn Kelly herself for asserting that biology dictates that men be dominant over women and children need to be "in households where they have a mom at home nurturing them while dad is out bringing home the bacon" in order to thrive.
While Erickson may be a firebrand (and often a truly hateful one on any number of subjects) who would place his home with the party's grassroots, in this instance he was acting as a representative of a GOP establishment that is desperate to find a way to attack Trump. Doing it with direct criticism wasn't enough, so maybe they can accomplish the task by shutting him out of some events and generally acting as though he doesn't need to be taken seriously anymore.
Defending Megyn Kelly's honor provided an excellent excuse. Fox is in many ways the Republican Party's organ, and it always has the party's best interests (at least as it perceives them) at heart. That's why the network's personalities were so tough on most of the candidates during that debate: Right now, the party's interest lies in weeding out the weak performers and challenging the candidates who might become the nominee. As for Kelly, she's not just a Fox star, she's a unique Fox star. Unlike the hundreds of other young, attractive blond women who appear on the network on any given day, Kelly is not only genuinely smart and talented but has her own large fan base. And unlike the network's other big draws, like Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity, her appeal goes beyond angry old white guys shaking their fists at the screen. The admiration for her among conservatives is deep and wide.
We also can't ignore the fact that the smarter Republicans know that they're going to have a real problem with women voters in 2016-particularly if Hillary Clinton is the Democratic nominee and they have the chance to elect the first woman president. At that same debate, Marco Rubio and Scott Walker emphasized that they favor bans on abortion even in cases of rape and incest, and Walker seemed to say he favored a ban even in cases where the pregnant woman's life is in danger. Republicans are currently renewing their long war on Planned Parenthood. Trump or no Trump, there will likely be a huge gender gap in this election, and this only makes it worse.
Who knows what vital voting bloc Trump will insult next, but Republicans are hoping that he's finally gone too far and they can shove him out of the race, or at least down to the point where he's no longer the hub around which the contest revolves. "The fire still burns, but the fire is now contained," Republican consultant Alex Castellanos told The Washington Post, in what sounded a lot like wishful thinking. "He can't grow. He has condemned himself to be a protest candidate, not a serious candidate for the Republican nomination. That means we now move forward to a more normal debate." Well ... maybe. Although I suppose it depends what you mean by "normal."
Here's the problem for the GOP: Trump isn't going to fall because he says something insulting to someone, leading to those 20 percent or so of the party's primary voters who are now supporting him saying, "Oh my goodness, Trump isn't the guy I thought he was!" They have a pretty good idea of who he is, and they're behind him precisely because he doesn't talk like other politicians and he doesn't care who he insults. They aren't troubled by the prospect of him running as an independent, because they don't think too highly of their own party. And when party bigshots criticize him, they take it as evidence that he's doing something right.
Trump is leading the primary polls right now, and he'll fall behind only when somebody else pulls ahead. That probably won't happen until a few candidates drop out and voters begin to coalesce around a small number of main contenders. As long as 16 other candidates are splitting the vote, Trump can remain on top, even if his support is finite. In other words, it's going to be a while.
