Susan Chira, New York Times – September 24, 2016
When you’re scared, do you feel safer with Mommy or with Daddy? That, at heart, is the visceral question voters must address as they consider whether Hillary Clinton or Donald J. Trump is the leader they trust to protect them in an age of terror. A key test will come in Monday’s debate.
Taryn Hillin, Fusion – August 5, 2016
Hillary Clinton’s opponents like to argue that if the Democratic nominee wins the presidency it will only be because she’s a woman. Even Donald Trump famously accused Clinton of “playing the woman’s card,” because we all know women have it sooo easy when it comes to ascending to positions of power.
Jay Newton-Small, TIME – May 17, 2016
Trump’s approach to female voters is one of hyper-masculinization: he portrays himself as strong and his opponents weak, particularly on national security, and he pledges to protect women from rape or murder by illegal immigrants, invoking the murder of Californian Kathryn Steinle by an undocumented man early and often on the campaign trail.
Ben Brody, Bloomberg – April 5, 2016
Women support Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump because they “feel he’s going to be the strongest for the country in terms of protection, in terms of the border, in terms of ISIS, in terms of other countries,” he says on Fox News.
Igor Bobic, Huffington Post – February 7, 2016
“I have to admit, as I was sitting there listening to that conversation, my reaction was, ‘Are you guys nuts?’” Cruz said, according to Politico. “Listen, we have had enough with political correctness, especially in the military. Political correctness is dangerous. And the idea that we would draft our daughters to forcibly bring them into the military and put them in close combat, I think is wrong, it is immoral, and if I am president, we ain’t doing it.”
Abigail Adams, International Business Times – January 30, 2016
After the high-profile terrorist attacks in Paris and San Bernardino last year, a CBS News/New York Times poll in December found that more Americans were concerned about future terrorist threats than at any point since right after Sept. 11, 2001. In the months since the attacks, the feeling has remained particularly strong among women, at least in the early-voting state of Iowa.
Aaron Zitner, Wall Street Journal – January 8, 2016
As a group, women lean Democratic. But if the recent rise of terrorism fears persists, the Republican Party could well make gains. Already, signs are emerging of the return of “security moms,” the women who moved toward the GOP after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks made national security a dominating concern. These women were credited with helping to deliver seats to the Republican Party in both the House and Senate in 2002, a tough feat for a president’s party in a midterm year.
Joanne C. Bamberger, San Francisco Chronicle – December 11, 2015
Hillary Rodham Clinton learned during her first presidential run that, at least until we elect the first female president, there is no getting around the gender issue. She tried to ignore it in 2008, and we all know how that ended. So she’s owning it for the 2016 campaign, but with the world situation, she has to find a way walk a line between a softer, kinder Hillary and the strong, determined commander in chief she tried to convince us she could be eight years ago.
Glenn Kessler, The Washington Post – December 6, 2015
“They [the 9/11 hijackers] put their families on airplanes a couple of days before, sent them back to Saudi Arabia, for the most part. Those wives knew exactly what was going to happen. And those wives went home to watch their husbands knock down the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and wherever the third plane was going, except we had some very, very brave passengers, wherever that third plane was going. Those wives knew exactly what was happening.”
Michael Isikoff, Yahoo Politics – September 28, 2015
Positioning herself as a steely advocate of aggressive counterterrorism programs, Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina offered a vigorous defense of CIA waterboarding as a tactic that helped “keep our nation safe” in the aftermath of 9/11.