The important point, however, is that many conservatives are comfortable linking gender and personal traits like toughness. Liz Cheney is plainly one of those conservatives.
Recall her rejoinder to Sen. Ted Cruz, after the Texan accused Cheney last year of suffering from “Trump derangement syndrome.” Cheney mocked Cruz for groveling toward Trump even though he has in the past attacked Cruz’s own family members. “Trump broke Ted Cruz,” Cheney told CNN. “A real man would be defending his wife, and his father, and the Constitution.”
Recall also a Cheney aide’s taunt of Rep. Matt Gaetz, a camera-loving Trump warrior, who traveled to Wyoming to urge voters to reject Cheney and demand her resignation: “Gaetz can leave his beauty bag at home. In Wyoming, the men don’t wear make-up.”
As it happens, an instinct to sneer at the failed manhood of fellow politicians is one place where Cheney and Trump are aligned. In the recent book This Will Not Pass, authors Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns reveal that Trump in the closing days of his presidency began calling House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy “a pussy” because he perceived that he was not backing him with insufficient fervor. McCarthy, who for a moment had seemed ready to break with Trump over the Jan. 6 riot, quickly fell back in line, “more or less setting out to prove [Trump] right.”
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