For the Republican women who have spent the past few years working to broaden the appeal of the Grand Old Party, Donald Trump arrived on the scene like a wrecking ball, tearing down the foundations they had laid over the past few years to try to create a more diverse and open party.

With his penchant for bluster and disdain for political correctness, there are few slices of the American electorate the billionaire businessman has yet to offend. But one group in particular poses a real problem for Trump, should he become the nominee, and for the party, should it win the presidency and keep control of Congress in November – and that group happens to make up 51% of the population.

“General election women voters think he’s abhorrent,” said Katie Packer, the chairwoman of Our Principles Pac, which opposes Trump. “They think he’s a sexist. They think he doesn’t respect women, and doesn’t really view women in any real way beyond their physical appearance.

“If the party leadership embraces Donald Trump as the general election nominee than I think it will damage our party for a generation.”

In interviews with a half dozen female Republican strategists, the women expressed concern that Trump’s boorish behavior will leave a lasting stain on a GOP that is otherwise working hard to reinvent itself. They said a Trump nomination not only threatens the party’s chance of winning the White House in November but could also have serious consequences for congressional, state and local candidates.

“You can’t win a general election and lose the women by these numbers. It’s devastating to Republicans. It’s totally unsustainable,” said Packer, whose group released a searing ad against Trump that features women reading some of his most offensive remarks.

While Trump’s string of victories clearly show that his message has resonated with a swath of conservative women, the gender gap in his support among Republican primary voters presages an even wider divide in a general election against Hillary Clinton, who will likely be the first female presidential nominee in American history.

Polls consistently show Trump with historically low approval ratings among women. An NBC/WSJ poll last month found that nearly half of Republican female primary voters – 47% – said they “can’t see” themselves supporting Trump, compared to about three in 10 women who could not imagine supporting his opponents, Texas senator Ted Cruz and Ohio governor John Kasich.

And while his behavior – past and present – threatens to repel women from the party at historic rates, many Republican women contend that he is doubly damaging to the party because he is not what they consider a true conservative.

Trump has vacillated on a host of social issues, including his support for abortion, and recently suggested that transgender people should be allowed to choose which bathroom they use. He also boasts a populist position on trade and clashes with party orthodoxy on foreign policy and campaign finance.

“This election puts women in an incredibly tough spot, especially women who don’t support many or any of Hillary Clinton’s policies but who also don’t support Donald Trump,” said Mindy Finn, president of Empowered Women and a GOP strategist. “Conservative women don’t really have a presidential candidate. They are a lost electorate.”

The war on women

In this campaign cycle so far, Trump has tussled with Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly after she pressed him on his history of disparaging women; insulted former rival candidate Carly Fiorina’s appearance; threatened to “spill the beans” on Cruz’s wife Heidi; suggested that women who have abortions should face “some form of punishment”, a statement he later reversed; and defended his campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, after he grabbed reporter Michelle Fields by the arm as she tried to ask him a question during a March press conference. (prosecutors declined to press charges.)



Democrats have already seized on these moments, weaving them into the “war on women” narrative that Republicans had hoped to undercut this election cycle. During her victory speech in Philadelphia on Tuesday night, Clinton appealed to “thoughtful Republicans” to join her campaign in a fight against an intolerant Trump.

Trump’s coalition relies heavily on male voters. Exit polls from every primary contest except one found that Trump draws a higher percentage of support from men than women. On average, Trump polled between five to ten percentage points better with men than with women.

Yet Trump insists that he would be “the best for women” and often adds that he “respects” and “cherishes” them. In an interview with NBC’s Today Show on Thursday, Trump batted away accusations of sexism: “No one respects women more than I do.”

On Tuesday night, Trump, basking after a five-state sweep, derided Clinton for playing the “woman card” and taunted her by claiming that if she were a man she would not even win “5% of the vote”. The comments inspired an ironic hashtag on Twitter about the perks of having a “gender card”.

Standing behind him, the wife of New Jersey governor Chris Christie, Mary Pat, appeared to cast a disapproving glance when he made the remark.

Clinton, prepared for the assault, fired back: “If fighting for women’s healthcare and paid family leave and equal pay is ‘playing the woman card,’ then deal me in.” By Wednesday, her campaign was promoting her rebuttal as a win for women, and highlighting the exchange in a fundraising email to supporters.

GOP women for Hillary?

If Trump and Clinton win their parties’ nominations, a large swath of conservative women will be left with a choice for president between a billionaire businessman who they loathe and the possible first female president who they vehemently despise. And in that scenario, the strategists say, Clinton may be the more palatable choice.

“There is going to be a phenomenal amount of attrition of women voters to Hillary Clinton; I just don’t think that’s going to be because Hillary Clinton is in anyway a good or acceptable candidate or because she has two x chromosomes,” said Liz Mair, a Republican operative and the founder of the anti-Trump Pac Make America Awesome. “I think it’s going to be because he’s that bad.”

Trump’s behavior has allowed other Republican candidates like Cruz to make inroads with women voters, Mair noted. After Trump went after Cruz’s wife, Mair said many women who disagreed with the Texas senator politically were impressed by his response. In Madison, Cruz hosted an event called The Celebration of Strong Women, featuring his wife, mother and Carly Fiorina, who he selected as his running mate on Wednesday.

But after Trump’s sweep on Tuesday, Bethany Mandel, a senior contributor for The Federalist and a part of the Never Trump movement, a concerted effort among Republicans to stop the frontrunner from clinching the nomination, said she had lost hope that the other candidates could keep him from gaining the 1,237 delegates needed to win the nomination. Now she is faced with the prospect of voting for a woman she despises – or not voting at all.

“I honestly think Donald Trump would be worse for America than Hillary Clinton, and that is really, really saying something,” Mandel said. If the polling predicts a tight race between Clinton and Trump in a general election in her state of New Jersey, Mandel said she would make the unthinkable choice and vote for Clinton. If not, she won’t vote for a presidential candidate.

“When I was a kid, I had a countdown on my wall that counted down the days until I turned 18 when I could vote in a presidential election. To not vote would be unfathomable to me, but that’s where we’re at,” she said.

Yet Trump’s message has appealed to some conservative women. Scottie Nell Hughes, political editor of RightAlerts.com and a vocal Trump supporter, downplayed Trump’s challenges with female voters.

“It’s a problem that any Republican male is going to face,” she said, noting that Trump has a record of hiring and promoting women in his private businesses and in his campaign. “It’s an unfortunate stigma in the GOP.”