Last week, Donald Trump retweeted a picture of his own wife and Ted Cruz's wife which compared the two on who would make a better First Lady of the United States based on their physical appearances.
This photo (and Cruz attacking Trump for his wife's past nude GQ shoot) prompted "Wifegate." The women have been attacked for their looks and past decisions, and not the wives' other credentials and character or even focusing on the men's campaigns and the issues that face the nation. But this isn't the first time GOP candidates have made comments about women and women's health issues that have been demeaning or even incorrect. Here's a rundown of comments made by this election's GOP candidates that have made the fight for women's equality that much harder for us this election cycle.
1. John Kasich:
"How did I get elected? Nobody was — I didn’t have anybody for me. We just got an army of people and many women who left their kitchens to go out and go door-to-door and put yard signs up for me."
Because the only place you can find women nowadays is in kitchens.
2. Donald Trump:
"Look at that face! Would anyone vote for that? Can you imagine that, the face of our next president? I mean, she's a woman, and I'm not s'posedta say bad things, but really, folks, come on. Are we serious?"
These are his comment's on his fellow, qualified presidential candidate Carly Fiorina. He couldn't attack her based on stances on issues, past experience, or even make a sensible argument, he had to resort to attacking her looks and how that would lead to a failed presidency, because he is so good looking himself and that's the reason people are voting for him.
I'll only dedicate one quote to Trump because he's not worth the time. A quick Google search can give you a full rundown of all the demeaning things he has said about women, but you can do that on your own time.
3. Ted Cruz:
“I have been a conservative my entire life. I have never met anybody, any conservative who wants to ban contraceptives. Last I checked, we don’t have a rubber shortage in America. Like look, when I was in college, we had a machine in the bathroom. You put 50 cents in — and voila!”
Okay, but what about a woman's right to contraceptives. Does he think that only men use contraceptives? Who taught this man sex ed?
Cruz also called the war on women (our workplace equality and right to women's healthcare) "an utterly made-up nonsense issue."
4. Ben Carson:
"We've allowed the purveyors of the vision to make mothers think that that baby is their enemy and they have the right to kill it. Can you see how perverted that line of thinking is? During slavery, a lot of the slave owners thought that they had the right to do whatever they wanted to that slave — anything that they chose to do. What if the abolitionist had said, you know, 'I don't believe in slavery. I think it's wrong. But you guys do whatever you want to do.' Where would we be?”
An African-American presidential candidate literally compared abortions to slavery.
5. Marco Rubio:
"It’s a terrible situation. I mean, a crisis pregnancy, especially as a result of something as horrifying as that, I’m not telling you it’s easy. I’m not here saying it’s an easy choice. It’s a horrifying thing that you’ve just described. I get it, I really do. And that’s why this issue is so difficult. But I believe a human being, an unborn child has a right to live, irrespective of the circumstances of which they were conceived. And I know that the majority of Americans don’t agree with me on that.”
Often labeled as a moderate, Rubio has a strong pro-life record and not always at the hands of the "women's health" argument. In this comment made on ABC, he basically said in lesser words, he would look into the eyes of a rape victim and tell them "tough shit but you're keeping the baby."
6. Mike Huckabee:
“If you felt something incredibly powerful at Auschwitz and Birkenau over the 11 million killed worldwide and the 1.5 million killed on those grounds, cannot we feel something extraordinary about 55 million murdered in our own country in the wombs of their mothers?”
Another awful comparison, this time comparing abortion to the Holocaust.
7. Mitt Romney:
"I had the chance to pull together a cabinet, and all the applicants seemed to be men … I went to a number of women's groups and said, 'Can you help us find folks?' and they brought us whole binders full of women."
A classic. This comment wasn't made during this election or by one of the current candidates, but it's just such a great quote about women's inequality in the workplace. "Binder full of women" literally has its own Wikipedia page.
