The battle for Iowa seems to be coming down to Texas Sen. Ted Cruz vs. Donald Trump. Of course, there are likely to be five candidates still in the race after the Feb. 1 Iowa caucuses, but the debate Thursday highlighted the clash between Cruz and Trump:
Donald Trump and Ted Cruz clashed Thursday in their sharpest — and most personal — encounters of the campaign season.
“I guess the bromance is over,” Trump told CNN’s Dana Bash after the debate.
The 2.5-hour event sponsored by Fox Business Network was filled with testy exchanges between the seven candidates on stage. Cruz and Trump are battling for first place in Iowa with less than three weeks until the state’s caucuses, though the businessman has a commanding lead nationally. And with pressure mounting for someone to emerge as an establishment alternative to Trump and Cruz, sparks flew between Marco Rubio and Chris Christie.
The much-anticipated Trump vs. Cruz showdown took a few minutes to materialize — but when it did, it packed a punch.
Cruz forcefully responded to Trump’s accusations that he isn’t eligible to be president because he was born in Canada — a controversy that Trump has only recently embraced.
“Back in September, my friend Donald said he had his lawyers look at this in every which way,” Cruz said. “There was nothing to this birther issue.”
He added: “Since September, the Constitution hasn’t changed. But the poll numbers have.”
Yes, the poll numbers have changed in Iowa, and also nationally. If you look at the Real Clear Politics average, the big story of the 2012 Republican campaign so far has been the collapse of Jeb Bush, who was averaging 17.8% nationally in July, but is now only 4.8%. The Bush campaign has raised more than $24 million, so what happened? To paraphrase the Beatles, money can’t buy Bush love:
Concerns about the impact of money on politics assume that if you buy enough ads you can elect anybody. If that were true, Jeb would be the frontrunner. Instead, he’s running way behind other candidates who, in different ways, have done a better job of addressing voters’ concerns.
It turns out that addressing voters’ concerns is more important than slick TV spots. And that means that the only campaign finance “reform” we need is for candidates (and donors) to quit tossing money at consultants and instead to speak to the American people about what the American people care about.
If nothing else comes from Jeb’s candidacy, that’s a valuable lesson indeed.
(Hat-tip: Instapundit.) Bush is heading toward a humiliating defeat in Iowa — no better than fourth place, and perhaps fifth or sixth — and his highly paid staff should be busy writing an eloquent concession speech: “Spend more time with my family,” blah blah blah. Meanwhile, on the Democrat side, Hillary Clinton may be approaching her own humiliation at the hands of Bernie Sanders:
Hillary Clinton has lost most of her lead over Bernie Sanders in the race to win Iowa’s Democratic presidential caucuses, a new Iowa Poll shows.
Clinton, who has been the favorite all along, now leads Sanders by just 2 percentage points in The Des Moines Register/Bloomberg Politics poll. That’s down from 9 percentage points a month ago.
Clinton is now the top choice of 42 percent of likely Democratic caucusgoers, compared with Sanders’ 40 percent, the poll finds. The poll’s margin of error is plus or minus 4.4 percentage points.
As recently as early November, Clinton had a 30-point lead over Sanders in the RCP average of Iowa polls, but there has been a sharp shift in the past month. In early December, a Quinnipiac poll of Iowa Democrats showed Hillary leading Bernie by 11 points, but the latest Quinnipiac poll in Iowa has Sanders leading 49-44. News flash: People don’t like Hillary Clinton. Her own husband doesn’t like Hillary Clinton.
In an astounding leap of feminist logic, Berkeley law student Courtney Fraser condemns chivalry as “benevolent sexism,” blaming “sexual violence against women” on “the perpetuation of rape culture, which normalizes this violence.” Of course, “the age of chivalry is gone,” as Edmund Burke observed in 1790, but feminists are fiercely determined to eradicate whatever vestiges of the “unbought grace of life” yet remain. Men’s obligation of courtesy toward women is patriarchal oppression, and any sense a man may have of a duty to protect women against insult or injury must be abolished, Ms. Fraser insists:
This assertion is perhaps as startling to most readers in the 21st century as it would have been to Edmund Burke more than 200 years ago, but this is where feminist ideology must inevitably lead. The pursuit of radical “equality” requires lunatic madness, and everyone who climbs aboard the feminist bandwagon must understand that the movement’s ultimate destination is Bedlam.
What is perhaps most interesting in Ms. Fraser’s argument is her sources. Her first cited source is Susan Griffin, whose 1971 article “Rape: The All-American Crime” was first published in the radical journal Ramparts. A veteran of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement, Griffin portrayed rape as a political crime — a manifestation of women’s oppression under the sexist regime of male supremacy — and asserted that “rape and the fear of rape are a daily part of every woman’s consciousness.” To support her claim that “forcible rape is the most frequently committed violent crime in America today,” Griffin engaged in what has since become a well-known feminist tactic, statistical creativity:
In 1968, 31,060 rapes were reported. According to the FBI and independent criminologists, however, to approach accuracy this figure must be multiplied by a factor of ten to compensate for the fact that most rapes are not reported; when these compensatory mathematics are used, there are more rapes committed than aggravated assaults and homicides.
The use of this kind of “compensatory mathematics” to exaggerate the prevalence of rape is necessary to the feminist project of blaming all men for “violence against women.” Feminists employ a deceptive rhetoric that generalizes responsibility, so that wrongdoing is always blamed on a collective group (males) rather than on the individual. While this collectivist worldview amounts to an unjust accusation against law-abiding males, it also simultaneously empowers feminists to assert their authority to speak as victims of collective oppression.
“Women are an oppressed class. . . .
“We identify the agents of our oppression as men. . . . All men have oppressed women.”
— Redstockings, 1969
Feminism divides humanity into two groups — men (the oppressors) and women (the oppressed) — and thereby establishes a double-standard wherein no woman is ever responsible for her failures or disappointments, and everything men say or do is condemned as tainted by “male supremacy.” A critical student of feminist discourse notices their use of jargon terms (“sexism,” “misogyny,” “objectification,” “patriarchy,” etc.) all of which are more or less interchangeable synonyms, pejorative ways of labeling the ordinary behavior of normal men. Any man who admires a woman’s beauty is a sexist who has objectified her with the male gaze, according to feminist ideology, so that men are subject to denunciation merely for looking at women.
However, the work most often cited by Ms. Fraser is Judith Butler’s 2004 book Undoing Gender. Professor Butler is the leading proponent of feminist gender theory — the social construction of the gender binary within the heterosexual matrix — and one gathers that Ms. Fraser’s plan to end “rape culture” is simply to eliminate all differences between men and women. She contends (p. 141) that “gender norms, and the rigid binary division of gender, must be broken down if the rates at which rape is committed and acquitted are to decrease.” Ms. Fraser claims (p. 190) that Professor Butler’s writing on butch/femme lesbian roles “presents a compelling argument that identities that queer the gender or sexuality paradigm have the potential, if legitimized, to undermine the hegemony of the normative status quo.” In a footnote (p. 145), Ms. Fraser laments “cultural narratives and stereotypes . . . based largely on heteronormative and cisgender categories and relationships,” and she finally concludes (p. 203):
Feminist advocates should seek to shape the law to accommodate and protect those with nonnormative genders and sexualities — not only as an end in itself, but as a means of delegitimizing the gender-based norms that support rape culture through destabilizing gender in the first instance.
In the 21st century, it would be considered an insult to accuse a feminist of heterosexuality. One notes the use of first-person plural pronouns in a 2013 comment Courtney Fraser wrote at an Oregon newspaper’s website in support of same-sex marriage, as well as Ms. Fraser’s use of the phrase “us queer folks” in a blog post about the 2013 Windsor decision. We may take this as signifying Ms. Fraser’s refusal to participate in “the normative status quo” of “heteronormative and cisgender categories and relationships.” While her non-participation in heterosexuality is entirely her own private choice, however, who is Courtney Fraser to present herself as an authority fit to pass judgment on the choices of those who do participate in heterosexuality? That is to say, why must the rest of us be lectured in this manner by a law school student who proclaims that chivalry is the cause of “rape culture,” which Ms. Fraser proposes to eliminate by “destabilizing gender”? And speaking of insane feminists obsessed with rape, Alexandra Brodsky (Yale Law, Class of 2016) is angry at Democrat Bernie Sanders for saying this:
“Rape and assault is rape and assault. Whether it takes place on campus or on a dark street. And if a student rapes a fellow student, that has got to be understood to be a very serious crime. It has got to get outside of the school and have a police investigation. And that has to take place. Too many schools are seeing this as well it’s a student issue, let’s deal with it. I disagree with that. It is a crime and it has to be treated as a serious crime. And you are seeing now the real horror of many women who have been assaulted or raped, sitting in a classroom alongside somebody who raped them. Rape is a very, very serious crime and it has to be prosecuted. It has to be dealt with.”
Ms. Brodsky and her feminist comrades have used a non-existent “rape epidemic” to incite a climate of sexual hysteria, which has resulted in male students being expelled from universities because of accusations that are not only unsubstantiated, but actually contradicted by evidence and testimony. The kind of “campus equality” Ms. Brodsky advocates turns out to mean that heterosexuality is effectively criminalized on college campuses, because no male student can ever be certain that the girl who says “yes” tonight won’t change her mind tomorrow and accuse him of rape (because “regret equals rape”).
Feminism is a totalitarian movement that promotes anti-male hate propaganda in law, in politics, in media and especially in education. No honest person could support such a movement, which is why “feminist” has become a synonym for liar.
Defense wins football games. Senior linebacker Reggie Ragland (above) and his University of Alabama teammates know this, and they face a tough challenge against the undefeated #1-ranked Clemson Tigers in the BCS championship game. Never mind anything else the analysts and commentators tell you. If ‘Bama’s defense can stop the Tigers, the Crimson Tide will win tonight.
The game may be decided in the first quarter. Clemson’s high-scoring offense has been held to less than 24 points only twice during the past season, against Louisville Sept. 17 and against Florida State Nov. 7. But Alabama has only given up 24 points once, in their 43-37 loss to Ole Miss Sept. 19, and the Crimson Tide’s defense was untouchable in their 38-0 shutout of Michigan State in the Dec. 31 Cotton Bowl. Because Clemson usually expects to score a lot of points, if Alabama can keep the Tigers off the scoreboard during the first quarter, this will give the Crimson Tide a huge psychological edge. (Trash talk, Clemson?)
Stopping Clemson will not be easy, of course. Their quarterback, Deshaun Watson, threw for 3,699 yards and 31 touchdowns this year and — perhaps more importantly — Watson also ran for 1,032 yards and 12 touchdowns. Watson is a very dangerous threat, and the Alabama defense will have its hands full. But the Crimson Tide’s defensive front line is the best in college football. ‘Bama rotates eight players in a three-man front, and seldom uses more than one linebacker in pass rush, keeping seven men in coverage. If the Tide defense can shut down Clemson’s running game and force Watson into 3rd-and-long situations, Alabama should make the Tigers pay a price in sacks and interceptions.
Alabama’s offense, of course, has the Heisman winner Derrick Henry at running back, and if it were up to me, the play-calling would be “Henry right, Henry left, Henry up the middle” until Clemson shows they can stop the run. But Coach Nick Saban also has a very good, but underrated quarterback in Jake Coker, who has thrown for 2,775 yards and 19 TDs. Coker had the best game of his career against Michigan State, throwing for 286 yards and two touchdowns.
Still, the key for the Tide will be defense. Defense wins football games.
UPDATE IV: Eddie Jackson intercepted a Watson pass at the Clemson 42, and seven plays later, Derrick Henry ran for his second touchdown with 9:35 remaining in the first half.
UPDATE V: A blown coverage assignment by a Clemson safety left Alabama receiver O.J. Howard wide open on the sideline, and Jake Coker hit him for a 53-yard touchdown pass with 12:53 left in the third quarter.
UPDATE XII: Deshaun Watson and the Tigers don’t quit. Clemson scores a touchdown on a 15-yard Watson pass, tries for a two-point conversion and misses.
Alabama 38, Clemson 33.
UPDATE XIII: Exciting touchdown drive! Coker hit O.J. Howard on a swing pass and Howard raced 63 yards down the sideline. Coker ran for a first down at the Clemson 3-yard line and then, on 3rd-and-goal from the 1, Derrick Henry plunged over for the touchdown.
Wanna kiss O.J. Howard on the mouth, in a completely heterosexual way. #RollTide
Unlike most of the other posts on this site, the titles for the FMJRA and Rule 5 Sunday have no particular significance, no connection to the contents, except as a key to whatever young woman (or not so young woman) I’m using as an appetizer this week. Set the Objectifying Male Gaze cannons to Stunning! In this case, the former Elizabeth Wooldridge Grant, better known to pop music fans as Lana del Rey, who coincidentally has a song out called “Prom Song (Gone Wrong)” which everyone thinks is called “Teenage Wasteland”, which used to be what everyone thought The Who’s “Baba O’Riley” was called. This has been your bit of music trivia for the weekend. In any case, the management reminds you that many of the following links are to nekkid or almost-naked women. and we’re not responsible for what happens if you click on them while people who can and will make your life even more miserable than it is already are watching. Discretion: use it.
Not actually named Lana Del Rey. (inb4 screams of “Cultural Appropriation!”)
Males are “the dominant class” and “actual feminism is about female liberation from males” and, therefore, short of moving to a lesbian separatist commune somewhere in the Oregon woods, nobody will ever have “actual feminism.” Because men have “built an entire society around the domination of” women, the “only feminism that men support is . . . rebranded patriarchal tripe.” This belief, that systematic male “domination” of women is the defining characteristic of “society,” is the fundamental basis of feminist ideology.
“Marriage means rape and lifelong slavery. . . . We reject marriage both in theory and in practice. . . . Love has to be destroyed. It’s an illusion . . . It may be that sex is a neurotic manifestation of oppression. It’s like a mass psychosis.”
— Ti-Grace Atkinson, 1969
“Women are an oppressed class. . . .
“We identify the agents of our oppression as men. . . . All men have oppressed women.”
— Redstockings, 1969
“We are angry because we are oppressed by male supremacy. We have been f–ked over all our lives by a system which is based on the domination of men over women, which defines male as good and female as only as good as the man you are with. It is a system in which heterosexuality is rigidly enforced and Lesbianism rigidly suppressed.”
— Ginny Berson, “The Furies,” 1972
“All women are prisoners and hostages to men’s world. Men’s world is like a vast prison or concentration camp for women. This isn’t a metaphor, it’s reality. Each man is a threat. We can’t escape men.”
— Radical Wind, August 2013
“I don’t particularly like babies. They are loud and smelly and, above all other things, demanding . . . time-sucking monsters with their constant neediness. . . . I don’t want a baby. . . . Nothing will make me want a baby. . . . This is why, if my birth control fails, I am totally having an abortion.”
— Amanda Marcotte, March 2014
Liberal intellectuals are convinced that the rest of us are so stupid we need them to tell us what to think. Their narcissism manifests itself as a contempt for the common sense of ordinary Americans, an attitude Thomas Sowell analyzed in The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy. What inspires the Left’s rage — the source of their constant accusations that ordinary Americans are racist, sexist homophobes — is simply that the Left expects the rest of us to accept their authority as Our Moral Superiors™ and they become angry when we refuse to do so. The children of privilege spend Daddy’s money to get an Ivy League diploma and how dare you fail to acknowledge their right to tell you how to live?
Chanting, “Gun-free UT. Make it safe for you and me,” and, “Guns are not a teaching tool. They do not belong in school,” more than 200 attendees at the Modern Language Association’s annual meeting marched to the Texas Capitol Friday to protest the state’s new “campus carry” law.
The law, which will take effect this year, allows guns into public college classrooms and dormitories — much to the anger of many professors at Texas and elsewhere. . . .
Roland Greene, a professor of English and comparative literature at Stanford University and president of the MLA, said the association wanted Texas faculty members to know that “we stand with you.” . . .
The MLA is one of 29 scholarly associations that have jointly condemned the campus carry law.
(Hat-tip: Instapundit.) What the MLA is saying is that Texans are so manifestly unfit to govern themselves that they need literature professors to dictate their laws to them. Does anyone really think the average Ph.D. in English is so superior to the average Texan that a Stanford literature professor (author of such books as Five Words: Critical Semantics in the Age of Shakespeare and Cervantes) has the authority to tell Texans what to do? Good luck with that, buddy.
