Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski

As Republican lawmakers moved toward epic defeat on health care repeal, Donald Trump's "Grab 'em by the you-know-what" mentality really took hold, writes the Washington Post:

In the past week, Sen. Susan Collins (Maine) has been challenged by a male lawmaker to a duel. She and Sen. Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) were told that they and others deserve a physical reprimand for their decisions not to support Republican health-care proposals. Murkowski, who voted with Collins against starting the health-care debate this week, was specifically called out by President Trump on Twitter and told by a Cabinet official that Alaska could suffer for her choice, according to a colleague. The language of retribution increasingly adopted by Republican men reflects Trump’s influence and underscores the challenges GOP women can face when opposing the consensus of their party, which remains dominated by men, outside experts said. A videotape of Trump surfaced during the campaign revealing him bragging in vulgar terms about groping women, and some believed that opened the gates for further insults and degrading behavior toward women.

Let's not fool ourselves: the GOP's War on Women didn't start with Trump. The party's posture on everything from health care and contraception to child care and equal pay for equal work has been abhorrent for decades.

What the health care process revealed is just how entrenched and pervasive the GOP's misogyny really is—not even members of their own tribe are immune to it.

The male leadership kicked off the show by shutting female senators entirely out of the bill drafting process—the very same women who ultimately torpedoed the effort along with the help of Sen. John McCain. But it's the women who bore the brunt of their colleagues’ ire.