The New Congress Has A Record Number Of Women — But Very Few Republican Women; NPR, January 3, 2019

Danielle Kurztleben, NPR; The New Congress Has A Record Number Of Women — But Very Few Republican Women

"Both parties also have different ideas about how important diversity is. One in 3 Republicans believe there are too few women in political office. In comparison, 8 in 10 Democrats think so, according to the Pew Research Center.

Walsh adds that pitching a candidate's gender as a positive factor is a tough sell in a party where "identity politics" is an insult.

"On the Republican side there is a real shunning of identity politics. In fact, when Paul Ryan became speaker, he thought that the number one reason that there was the kind of partisan gridlock in Washington was because of identity politics," she said. "So that makes it harder it makes it harder when you go out to raise money and make the case for why why do elect more women, if you can't talk about the substantive difference that they make by being there.""

Why Aren’t Democrats Walking Away With the Midterms? Democrats miss Trump’s political gifts and the real threat he represents.; The New York Times, November 2, 2018

Bret Stephens, The New York Times;

Why Aren’t Democrats Walking Away With the Midterms?

Democrats miss Trump’s political gifts and the real threat he represents.

"I have written previously that the real threat of the Trump presidency isn’t economic or political catastrophe. It’s moral and institutional corrosion — the debasement of our discourse and the fracturing of our civic bonds. Democrats should be walking away with the midterms. That they are not is because they have consistently underestimated the president’s political gifts, while missing the deeper threat his presidency represents.

There’s a lesson here worth heeding. Our economic GDP may be booming, but our moral GDP is in recession."

The G.O.P.’s Cynical Gay Ploy; New York Times, 6/20/16

Charles M. Blow, New York Times; The G.O.P.’s Cynical Gay Ploy:

"Maybe Republicans want us to forget that, as ThinkProgress reported in December:

“Six of the Republican candidates vying for the presidency have signed a pledge promising to support legislation during their first 100 days in the White House that would use the guise of “religious liberty” to give individuals and businesses the right to openly discriminate against L.G.B.T. people.”

They want us to forget that although people of all political stripes have evolved on the issue of gay equality — including Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton —Republicans are the trailing edge of that evolution.

No amount of the exploitation of fear and the revising of history is going to change what we know about the Republican Party and their continued abysmal record on gay rights.

In the wake of tragedy, you can’t conveniently hang the L.G.B.T. community on the tree of life as a glistening ornament."