That sound you have been hearing for the past nine months from the Republican presidential race is the bottom of the barrel being scraped. This week, under intensive scraping, the bottom gave way, sending the race crashing into the gutter below.
On second thoughts, the race fell into the gutter long ago.
The debate in the Republican contest to pick a nominee in November's ballot has moved from Donald Trump, the party's front-runner, defending the size of his penis to comparing the attractiveness of his wife to Heidi Cruz, wife of chief rival Ted Cruz.
The latest sizing-up in the teenage boys' locker room began when Make America Awesome, an anti-Trump super political action committee, posted an ad of the billionaire's retired model wife on Facebook ahead of conservatives voting in Utah on Tuesday.
"Meet Melania Trump. Your next first lady," the ad said. "Or you could support Ted Cruz on Tuesday."
The super pac has no known ties with Cruz, but that didn't stop Trump from accusing the Texas senator of being behind the ad. "Lyin' Ted Cruz just used a picture of Melania from a GQ shoot in this ad. Be careful, Lyin' Ted, or I will spill the beans on your wife!" Trump tweeted.
“Pic of your wife not from us. Donald, if you try to attack Heidi, you’re more of a coward that I thought. #Classless,” Cruz tweeted back.
Spill the beans
Two days later, Trump was still not letting the row die. He re-tweeted a photograph posted by a follower to his own 7.2 million followers showing a picture of Heidi Cruz in an unflattering pose alongside a glamorous photo of Melania Trump with the caption: “No need to ‘spill the beans’; the images are worth a thousand words.”
This prompted the Texan to move the row beyond Twitter. Telling reporters on Thursday that “real men don’t bully women”, an angry Cruz said that the candidates’ spouses and children are “off-bounds”.
“It is not acceptable for a big, loud New York bully to attack my wife. It is not acceptable for him to amen insults, to send nasty tweets,” he said.
In a comment directed at his rival, Cruz added: “Donald, you’re a snivelling coward. Leave Heidi the hell alone!”
On Thursday, the internet exploded with suggestions that a story in the National Enquirer tabloid that alleged multiple Cruz extramarital affairs were "the beans".
Trump has form in making disparaging remarks about women, and this week's mud- slinging may be a sign of the rhetoric to come when he is likely to face Democrat Hillary Clinton in the run-up to November 8th.
He has attacked Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly, suggesting that she gave him a hard time in the first Republican debate in August because she had her period: It was "blood coming out of her wherever!" he said. He dismissed one-time candidate Carly Fiorina, asking in an interview who would vote for a woman who looked like her. "Look at that face!" he said.
In a race in which the other party’s front-runner is a woman seeking to become the first female president, Trump’s unfiltered penchant for mocking women is dangerous handicap in an election where gender politics will be a key.
The billionaire's support among female Republican voters lags behind his base of white, blue-collar men, who have catapulted him into a lead. He won Arizona, his 19th state out of 30, on Tuesday, putting him 738 delegates to Cruz's 463 ahead in the race to the finish line of 1,237.
Weak support
In the 15 states he has won where exit polls were conducted, Trump scored an average of just 36 per cent support among female Republican voters. Florida senator
Marco Rubio
beat him by four points in
Virginia
, an important swing state in the general election, and he lost women by three points to Cruz in
North Carolina
, another purple state.
Women generally don't like Trump. A poll by NBC News and the Wall Street Journal this month found that 47 per cent of Republican females could not fathom voting for him. The figures for his rivals were 32 per cent for Cruz, who has nine state victories, and 27 per cent for Ohio governor John Kasich who has only won his home state.
Among the general electorate, Trump is even more disliked: 70 per cent said they could never imagine voting for him.
Women traditionally vote for Democrats, and the shift is even more pronounced in a Trump versus Clinton match-up. The poll, which is consistent with other surveys, gave her a 27-point advantage.
Should Trump bag the Republican nomination, he will have to climb out of his gutter if he wants the votes of Republican women in November.