Iowa GOP women’s group touting unity

DES MOINES – A National Republican group launched an effort Monday to unify factions within the party around their 2016 GOP presumptive presidential candidate Donald Trump and in particular to rally women behind his campaign against likely Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton this fall.

'Women's voices and votes will make the difference,” said Carrie Almond, of Chillicothe, Mo., president of the National Federation of Republican Women who is leading a 'Destination: White House” bus tour that launched in Iowa to register Republican-leaning women to vote and rally federation members to help elect GOP candidates and 'put a Republican back in the White House.”

Almond shrugged off polls indicating Trump has challenges in attracting the support of women voters, saying her federation passed a unity resolution in March to support the GOP presidential nominee 'so we are ready to rally behind the presumptive nominee and take this across the finish line to victory.” She noted her federation's members logged more than 4.2 million campaign volunteer hours in 2014 helping Republican candidates.

'It's the women in the family unit, when there's trouble, who bring everybody to the dining room table and say, ‘OK, let's all have a nice meal and make up.' So that's what we're going to be doing is getting everybody united, registered to vote and engaged to be ready to take us back to the White House in 2016,” said Almond, before boarding the red, white and blue bus nicknamed 'Rosie,” that will end up in Maine by month's end.

Almond said it's 'quite easy” for women to support Trump when the opponent is Hillary Clinton and the next president will make critical appointments to the U.S. Supreme Court. 'We have to have a Republican to help get that situation taken care of in our favor. No question about it,” she said.

On hand to give the bus tour a rousing send off at the Republican Party of Iowa headquarters were Iowa's National Republican Committee members Tamara Scott and Steve Scheffler, State Auditor Mary Mosiman and other Republican activists.

Republican women once were a dormant electorate in Iowa, but have been experiencing a rebirth and rejuvenation in recent campaign cycles, to the point where they are a key coalition that will be needed to elect Republicans this fall.

'As you know, we've got a challenging task ahead of us here in this election, and I guess one of the biggest places where I think you could be of assistance is to encourage people out in the grassroots, people that have traditionally worked for our candidates, not to sit out this election,” Scheffler told those gathered to make the bus tour's first stop.

'No political candidate is perfect,” he noted. 'The bottom line is when you look at the alternative, Hillary Clinton, who in my view is very flawed, who is ethically challenged and maybe should be somewhere besides the White House, we have a big job to do. No candidate is perfect, but we have to do everything in our power to make sure that our presumptive nominee is elected president.”

The bus tour is slated to make Iowa stops Tuesday in Denison, waterloo and Walcott.