MAGA's damage control efforts only make their 'gobsmacking misogyny' more obvious: analysis

16 August 2024

2024 GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), have been insisting that they have nothing to do with Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation's controversial 922-page blueprint for a second Trump Administration. Yet Vance wrote the forward for Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts' book, "Dawn's Early Light: Taking Back Washington to Save America."

The book's release has been postponed until after the 2024 presidential election and now has a November 12 release date on Amazon. But Media Matters has obtained a copy and published excerpts from it on August 7.

In the book, Roberts rails against a "culture of childlessness" — which is also something that infuriates Vance. In interviews from 2021 and 2022, Vance bitterly attacked "childless cat ladies" and "childless Democrats." And he even described Americans as "sociopathic" if they decide against having children and proposed "punishing" them with tax increases.

Salon's Amanda Marcotte, in an article published on August 16, describes the parallels between Roberts and Vance and the "gobsmacking misogyny" the far-right MAGA Republicans have in common.

"Like Vance, Roberts is outraged that women have goals and interests outside of making babies early and often," the Philadelphia-based journalist explains. "The book has been delayed until after the election, but Media Matters has a galley copy, which features Roberts raving about the evils of birth control, in-vitro fertilization, and yes, even pets. Roberts laments that they allow women to feel that 'having a child seem(s) like an optional and not natural result of having sex.'"

Marcotte continues, "In the book, Roberts spits venom at dog parks, which he sees as a decadent concession to those he believes won't 'give up childish things, and live in the real world' by having kids. Dog parks are a result of 'the anti-family culture shaping legislation, regulation, and enforcement throughout our sprawling government,' he snarls."

The Salon journalist warns that this "fury over pets" — Vance with "childless cat ladies," Roberts with dog parks — "underscores" the "neo-patriarchal movement" they are promoting.

"They hide behind sentimental language about children," Marcotte says of Vance and Roberts, "but the pattern shows something else: resentment towards anything that might distract a woman from serving a man and raising babies. It's not just the big-ticket 'distractions' like having a job that infuriates them, either. Garden variety pleasures, such as having a pet, cause them to come unglued. Not weird at all!:

Amanda Marcotte's full article for Salon is available at this link.

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