WASHINGTON — Lisa Spies, a longtime Republican fundraiser, recently invited her closest political friends over for a pre-election girls night.

The occasion? To discuss how to get the GOP back on track with women.

Spies is among a growing number of Republican operatives who say Donald Trump’s rhetoric on women — and the defense of those remarks by many Republicans — will not only cost them dearly this year but could hurt for years to come if the party doesn’t learn from its current predicament.

“There are so many groups he’s alienated, but as far as women, it’s not just that he halted our progress, it’s that he reversed it,” said Spies, who served as Mitt Romney’s director of Jewish outreach in the 2012 campaign.

She expects Trump to lose big-time with women on Tuesday as a result. “Trump is not only going to lose the women’s vote,” she said. “He’ll lose the Republican women vote.”

For years, people like Spies have worked to engage women in the voting booth and the checkbook in hopes of changing the face of a male-dominated party. With good reason: Women account for the majority of the electorate and have outvoted men in every presidential election since 1980.

While white women, especially married ones — particularly in Texas — typically favor Republican candidates, nationally, women tend to vote Democratic. Women overwhelmingly favored President Barack Obama in 2012, though a majority of Texas women cast their ballots for Romney, according to exit polls.

Alice Stewart, a former communications director for Ted Cruz’s presidential campaign, isn’t hopeful that the current trajectory will change come Tuesday. She plans to vote for Trump only because she can’t pull the trigger for Hillary Clinton.

Still, she notes that Clinton has generally fared better with women in battleground states because of the “language and behavior of Donald Trump.”

Even before the release of the 2005 video in which Trump described grabbing and kissing women without their permission, Trump was known for insulting women about their appearance, including GOP primary rival Carly Fiorina and Cruz’s wife, Heidi.

He has also been accused of sexual assault by several women — accusations that the Trump campaign flatly denies and says are largely fueled by Clinton operatives.

Trump once said it’s a mistake to allow women to work. He has also taken heat for saying that Fox News reporter Megyn Kelly had “blood coming out of her wherever” during her tough questioning of him during a primary debate, comments that many took as a reference to a woman’s menstrual cycle.

Donald Trump said Fox News moderator Megyn Kelly had "blood coming out of her wherever" during her tough questioning of him during a GOP primary debate in August 2015. (File Photos/The Associated Press)

“There’s some damage that has been done and some bridge-building that needs to begin on November 9th, whether he wins or loses,” Stewart said. “Because the party, based on what’s happened since the nomination, has reinforced what many people have viewed: that it is a white, male-dominated party.”

After previous losses, Republicans have contemplated how to address the gender problem. What’s remarkable this time is how blunt many GOP women are in discussing it, even before the votes are tallied.

Amanda Carpenter, a former communications aide for Cruz, penned an op-ed in The Washington Post that asked GOP leaders: "Why didn't you defend women from this raging sexist, especially after so many Republican women — for so many years — eagerly defended the party from charges of sexism?"

Nancy French, a conservative, author and sexual abuse survivor, has accused the party of promoting and sheltering "an abuser." And Dana Perino, former White House press secretary for President George W. Bush, told USA Today that she feels "adrift as a Republican woman, maybe a woman without a party" and that the GOP must change how it discusses sexual assault and issues including paid maternity leave, or she fears more women will be alienated.

Sarah Isgur Flores, a Houston native who was the deputy campaign manager for Fiorina’s presidential run, is no Trump defender. But she’s quick to note that the discord may not be widespread.

“There is that sense of betrayal among women who worked in Republican politics,” she said. “But the question is, does that translate everywhere? I don’t think we’ll know until after the election.”

Research has made clear that party affiliation is the top factor at the polls, a far more powerful draw than gender issues. And both candidates, Flores notes, have historically low ratings with members of the opposite sex, though for vastly different reasons.

Trump has said he has "tremendous support" from women, but credible polling specific to gender within a party can be hard to come by. A CBS News poll in mid-October, however, found that 77 percent of Republican women support Trump. Romney took 93 percent of Republican women's vote in 2012, according to exit polls.

Kathleen Dolan, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee who studies gender and politics, said anything less than 90 percent indicates a “real vulnerability” for the candidate.

She said that whatever level of support Trump draws, the lasting harm to the party with women could be how some Republican leaders have defended the bombastic candidate.

Many women in the party “are not even reacting to Trump, but reacting to the Republican men standing with him. That’s what the real betrayal is that some Republican women are feeling,” Dolan said. “A nominee comes and goes, but it’s the leadership of the party and officeholders [who remain]. I do think that really is the place the greater problem lies.”

To be sure, Republican women aren’t speaking with a monolithic voice on the Trump issue, nor are they all feeling widespread discontent with the nominee and party leadership.

“I don’t see it,” said Kaye Goolsby of Katy, who served as Cruz’s national grass-roots chairwoman. “I see women out there working their buns off” to elect Trump.

Goolsby said many Texas Republican women, like her, first supported Cruz but now back the nominee. They firmly believe Trump is the better alternative to Clinton.

“He may not have been our first choice, and you may not like what he says sometimes, but we don’t like what other people say too sometimes,” she said. “So let’s go forward and do what we need to do to help.”

Barbara Meeks, former chairwoman of the Galveston County GOP, says Trump hasn’t turned off the women she knows.

“Every woman that I know is supporting Trump,” she said. “They are tired of business as usual.”

And in Dewitt County, GOP chairwoman Regina Cowan also brushed off suggestions that Trump has hurt the party’s outreach to women.

“The only thing he’s hurt is our sensibility,” she said. “But at the same time, being a woman myself and in Texas ... I have heard a lot worse.”

Far more damaging to the party at large, Cowan said, are Republican leaders who have distanced themselves from the nominee.

“You don’t have to like everything” Trump does, she said. “But we still need to support him.”

Regardless of what happens Tuesday, Spies and Stewart said the party must redouble its outreach to women and minorities — the very groups the GOP said it would focus on after Romney lost.

“We need to implement some type of outreach to women that is an ongoing, important program — not a program with a little office in the basement, but something taken seriously, that’s well-funded ... and not just relevant six months before an election,” Spies said.

“And it needs to be led by a woman.”