Against misogyny: why every conservative should #DumpTrump #NeverTrump

Heidi Cruz, a beautiful, intelligent, hard-working, successful woman
Heidi Cruz, a beautiful, intelligent, hard-working, successful woman

So, last week early Thursday morning, Donald Trump tweeted out a picture of his wife juxtaposed with a picture of Heidi Cruz that made her look very ugly.

In this post, I want to respond to Trump’s attack on Heidi, and urge Trump supporters to reconsider their support for Trump.

All about Heidi Cruz

Consider this Texas Tribune article about Heidi Cruz.

It says:

[Heidi] Cruz, 43, grew up in San Luis Obispo, Calif., the daughter of a dentist and dental hygienist who are Seventh-day Adventists.

[…]Cruz went to Claremont McKenna College and was active in the college Republicans and interested in appointive political office, said her mentor, Edward Haley. She also was intent on a career in business first. She moved to New York after graduation and worked on emerging markets at J.P. Morgan, an area in which she was interested after spending summers in Africa doing missionary work with her parents. She was put on the Latin America desk and taught herself to speak Spanish between 18-hour work days.

Cruz achieved her dream of attending Harvard Business School but turned down a job at Goldman Sachs to work on George W. Bush’s 2000 presidential campaign.

She later met and married Ted Cruz, and she has now put her career on hold to help her husband run for President.

More:

She now holds her own campaign events, talking up her husband’s values and laying out what the campaign sees as a grass-roots path to victory.

[…]She remains the campaign’s top fundraiser, now making many calls from the road instead of from the campaign’s airy Houston headquarters, where she installed a playroom with pillows decorated with raspberry prints for the girls. Cruz said she aims to make 30 calls a day but typically averages about 20 to 25; she is calling from the campaign and super PAC lists and trying to persuade donors to give the maximum allowed under federal election law.

“I don’t want to say it’s easy, and I don’t close every deal,” she said. “I think people want to be a part of something that addresses the main issue of the day, number one, which is Washington versus the people.”

[…]Ted Cruz told an audience in Winterset, Iowa, on Monday that the couple’s decision to run for president was difficult for his wife.

“Heidi spent a lot of years building a very, very successful career. And when we were deciding whether to run, particularly when you’re parents of young girls, that’s not an easy decision. And she was struggling with it,” he said.

Ted Cruz said his wife was driving, listening to a CD of Christian music sent by her sister-in-law. She was struck by a song about seeking the face of the Lord and pulled over on the freeway and started crying, he said. That moment, he said, “changed her heart,” and she decided that the race was about God, the country and the future.

Now, Heidi Cruz says her main job is to bolster her husband’s candidacy.

“There are women who use their husband’s candidacies for their own” purposes, she said recently while being driven to yet another airport. “I love my life. I love my career. This is not for me. This is for our country.”

Here is one more quote from a 2013 article on Heidi Cruz, from the radically leftist New York Times, of all places:

In a glimpse into their marriage that Mr. Cruz called “illustrative,” he recalled saying to his wife in the weeks before his Senate primary, when he was still behind in the polls, “Sweetheart, I’d like us to liquidate our entire net worth, liquid net worth, and put it into the campaign.”

“What astonished me, then and now, was Heidi within 60 seconds said, ‘Absolutely,’ with no hesitation,” said Mr. Cruz, who invested about $1.2 million — “which is all we had saved,” he added — into his campaign.

Here she is going door to door in New Hampshire in the winter:

Heidi Cruz waits for a New Hampshire voter to answer the door
Heidi Cruz waits for a New Hampshire voter to answer the door

The description of the photo by the person who posted it says:

Here’s a photo from the campaign trail that I’ve never shared. This is Heidi Cruz waiting in the cold to talk to a New Hampshire voter. She did this campaign work with me and three other kids. It was unglamorous: no media, no crowds, just a woman canvassing a neighborhood with a couple volunteers, trying to find someone to talk to about why she believed in her husband. Kind, genuine, humble: when the cameras she knows about are off, this is who Heidi Cruz is.

That’s a great wife.

Donald Trump’s attack on Heidi Cruz

It’s a shame that Donald Trump misses all the great things that Heidi has done and attacks her for her appearance. But this is what he values most in women, and this is why he keeps committing adultery on his wives as they age, and then divorcing them to trade them in for younger women. He thinks that a woman’s value is all in her appearance, so he thinks that Heidi is a loser.

Ted Cruz wasn’t born rich. He has had to work his way up to get where he is. Ted knows the value of a woman as a helper, so when it came time to get married, Ted chose the best helper he could find to help him do the big things that he wanted to do. Donald Trump inherited millions and millions of dollars. When it came time for him to choose a wife, he chose supermodel after supermodel. He has no idea what most wives really do to help their husbands, he doesn’t need the help of a woman, which is why he doesn’t value them as women.

Look at what he says:

“You know, it doesn’t really matter what they write as long as you’ve got a young and beautiful piece of *ss.”

“You have to treat [women] like sh*t.”

“A person who is very flat-chested is very hard to be a 10. Oftentimes when I was sleeping with one of the top women in the world, I would say to myself, thinking about me as a boy from Queens, ‘Can you believe what I am getting?’”

The “top women” are the ones who are “10s”. And what do you do with these women? You have sex with them. You don’t commit to loving and serving a woman for life. You just use them, and throw them away. That’s his view of women. That’s his record.

Mona Charen wrote in defense of Heidi Cruz in National Review.

She says:

Heidi Cruz happens to be an attractive woman, but that’s beside the point. Trump is such a shallow, low human being that he cannot get beyond judging others on their appearance. Basic decent manners forbid commenting on others looks except in the mildest way. “What a lovely dress!” or “That color suits you.” Polite people remember to see others in full — as professionals, wives, mothers, sisters, volunteers, patients, teachers and so forth. Trump is obsessed with people’s looks. He has disdained countless formidable and impressive women for their looks (remember what he said about Carly Fiorina?), and even when searching for kind things to say about his late brother, he lingered quite a while on how handsome he was. At a meeting with the editorial board of the Washington Post, after being asked about using tactical nuclear weapons against ISIS, Trump offered that “this is pretty great looking group.” As with other Trump traits, this is disturbing.

When I first saw Trump’s tweet comparing Heidi Cruz against Trump’s third wife, my first response was to immediately unfriend all of the Trump supporting “friends” on Facebook. That’s how much I hate this idea that a woman has no value unless she is young and beautiful. For some reason, I regard this blindness / dismissiveness about the value of women as complementary to men as misogyny. I think deep down, there is something in me that recognizes that a man’s job is to give a woman security. And what security can a man give a woman when she knows that her value to him is all tied up in her youth and beauty? Trump is an adulterer. He divorced his two wives when they lost their youth and beauty, and he re-married younger women who had better appearances. But what security is there for a woman in a man who sees her contribution to the marriage as youth and beauty? I don’t want Trump’s example to become widespread.

Youth and beauty cannot last – women know that. If we as a society decide to communicate Trump’s message to women, that they only have value if they are young and beautiful, it creates a situation where women will disengage from marriage, because they know they will be abandoned. Trump’s attack on Heidi Cruz is especially devastating in communicating that message. What he is really saying is that women just need to look hot and be good at sex. He is saying that they don’t need to go to school, they don’t need to work hard, they don’t need to save money. These are all the things that Heidi did in order to make a difference, and to be a good helper to her husband.

The more that women get their idea of value from born-rich promiscuous womanizers like Donald Trump, the more women will be depressed that they cannot give anything to a man that will make him stick around. We need to be teaching women how much value they have as supporters, listeners, nurturers and teachers in the home. We need to be teaching men that women who understand male nature and know how to use their feminine gifts remain valuable through changes in age and appearance. Men have a deep need for women as companions. Ted Cruz chose Heidi Cruz because she had the knowledge, wisdom and character to be a suitable companion and confidante for him. We need to be celebrating women like Heidi Cruz, not attacking them for their looks.

6 thoughts on “Against misogyny: why every conservative should #DumpTrump #NeverTrump”

  1. I think many people like Trump look at Cruz and think “He couldn’t trade his woman in for a hotter one, so he must be terrible. Even Clinton could get some on the side.” The idea that Cruz might actually want to keep his wife around does not occur. Cruz is a powerful and influential man, he could probably get himself a young groupie if he wanted to. Probably even a ten. But then again, where would that ten be when he wanted to liquidate everything he owned? And where would she be if he lost?

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    1. Exactly right.

      I’ve been wondering why people have so much trouble judging Trump accurately.

      I think feminism – the view that men have no special roles or responsibilities unique to their gender – has impoverished our ability to judge men who don’t take their responsibilities to love women and give them fidelity and security seriously. Now, all that can be said about men like Trump is “sexist”. But we need to be able to go further than that. Shaming a man for immorality (adultery, divorce, irresponsibility) is much more effective that shaming him for not being politically correct. There is a moral law and Trump has been breaking it his entire life. Cruz on the other hand married wisely, and that should be a credit to him.

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      1. Although, to play Devil’s Advocate, the point is also worth making that however much politicians play to the lowest common denominator and fight pettily, it is our job as responsible observes and, in the case of Americans, voters, to make a decision based on things other than marriage choices. :P

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      2. “I’ve been wondering why people have so much trouble judging Trump accurately.”

        It’s because he says exactly what he thinks about our country’s dire situation. I think Americans are so tired of hearing the denial, the lies, and the bs our country has been throwing at us for so long, that he’s like a breath of fresh air for a lot of people.

        I do agree with you that his views on women seem horrible, his record is horrible, etc… but Obama (to me) is much worse with the things he condones, and does, in secret… and it’s annoying to me to see Christians and Pastors “publicly” speak out against Trump, when they didn’t say A WORD about Obama. It’s just so hypocritical that it makes it very hard for me to take their “speaking out” about him seriously at all. Where were they when Obama was running and we had a horrible record of his votes during his time in the Senate? We knew he was evil, but our Pastors remained pretty neutral… I actually know many “Christians” who voted for him), but with Trump, suddenly everyone is all up in arms because of his aggressive anti-social behavior. He’s no worse than Obama and sounds like he’ll try his best to correct much of what Obama’s done wrong, so that’s why people are going for him. They are tired of Democrats, tired of people who speak politically correctly… the balloon has burst sort of thing, and they like Trump’s masculine, offensive style.

        If Trump does get elected (which unfortunately, I think he’s going to divide the votes and make us win Hilary, which is how we got her husband last time), but if he DOES get elected, I think of it as payback for all the Obama voters. Now they’ll get stuck for 4-8 years of someone they absolutely cannot stand, like we did with Obama. That sounds horrible, but I think a lot of people (like me) are angry at what our country has been dealt.

        And all that said, I do like Cruz better… but I don’t think the majority of people are going to go for him over Trump (for all the reasons stated). I really do think we’re going to end up with Hilary, and she’s going to end up like Angela Merkle and create a country run down and exploding in crime and refugees. :(

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        1. “It’s because he says exactly what he thinks about our country’s dire situation. ”

          “What does Trump offer his supporters that makes them so willing to overlook so much? He boldly articulates the resentment and anger they feel at having been betrayed by smug elites in general and the Republican establishment in particular. Charismatic leaders who articulated the just grievances of the people have often risen to power on the basis of that talent alone. And those who put them in power have often paid a catastrophic price afterwards. That story was repeated in countries around the world in the 20th century.”
          – Thomas Sowell

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  2. But since this post was about Heidi, yes, I totally agree with you. She’s wonderful and amazing, but she’s not running for president, her husband is. I sadly don’t think he’s strong enough to beat The Donald.

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