No offense, but you missed a key piece of this story.

Also female ex-GOP and I’d definitely argue I was a republican mostly because of how I was raised and because most young, politically minded people I knew were Democrats and I really enjoyed being contrary. Then I just kind of got used to it and ended up working in Republican politics for a decade after graduating…

I see, it’s the “fiscally responsible” party that has ruined Louisiana and Kansas, and whose leading candidate’s tax plan will add $1 trillion per year to the deficit. So responsible.

I know many Republican women, professionals, all of them, here in Washington. Let me try to explain - they are very, very lucky. They tend to be generally attractive, of an upper income, good schooling, met their now husbands early in life and had kids, get to work and/or stay home whenever it suits them because their…

Your biggest and most important issue is fiscal responsibility. Whom do you vote for?

Women who think their place is at home, cooking and cleaning.

I suspect the rich, white, Republican women in my area (red county in a blue state) tune out Trump’s vitriol, just like they do with the old boors at the country club. (“Oh that Mr. X, can you believe he said women shouldn’t wear trousers?! Shall we have lunch on the terrace after tennis or would you prefer the…

If my biggest issue were fiscal responsibility, I’d vote for the Democrat everytime. Republicans are notoriously bad at managing the economy.

TPM’s Josh Marshall has written a couple of insightful articles on ‘dominance politics’ (here and here). Some key quotes:

Your biggest and most important issue is fiscal responsibility. Whom do you vote for?

My mother is a Republican WOC. She touts meritocracy bullshit wherever she can. She’s very successful. However, whenever she is criticized by her mostly male peers, she refuses to attribute it to sexism, although her male counterparts do the same thing without mention.

I can’t imagine the difficulty in maintaining the cognitive dissonance that sexism doesn’t exist, it’s liberal’s fault, PC culture run amok, and all the other tag lines they write/speak while experiencing something so brutally sexist.

I think there’s a bit of a “running with the boys” kind of mentality too - as someone who grew up religious/conservative, you want to prove you’re not one of those whiny feminists and can take whatever is thrown at you. You want to be identified more as a man than as a woman. And you learn to place the ideology over…

Oh for sure they do.

Don’t forget pressure from religious leaders. I belonged to a strict Lutheran church where women have no say. I remember as a kid learning about a classmate whose mother voted Democrat and freaked out because I couldn’t understand it.

Haha I know :) because I look at the loud-and-proud GOP women in my family now from the other side and have those same thoughts (“the heck is wrong with you?!!?!")

Where you grow up will have a huge influence on your political views. The internet and leaving your parents house will change the way you think, but those first years of your environment are hard to overcome. If your parents listen to conservative talk radio all the time and only watch Fox News and everyone else’s…

This. I was a registered Republican in my late teen and very early 20s, which is something most people can’t even imagined about me now. I was born and raised in Oklahoma, and everyone around me was a Republican so I assumed I must be too. I just didn’t understand the difference because you just didn’t have many…

Yes, absolutely true for me, and for other women I know in similar situations. That’s part of the “leaving quietly” thing. And I might get flack for it here (“be loud! You’re part of the problem!” Etc) but y’all don’t know my life and I do what I can to try to change the minds of the people around me a little bit at a…

I know, this paragraph just killed me: