- It was a major buzzkill when Democrat Kyrsten Sinema defeated Republican Martha McSally last month in the race for the open U.S. Senate seat out of Arizona (incumbent Republican Jeff Flake chose to not seek reelection). However, there was speculation that McSally could be appointed by Gov. Doug Ducey to the late John McCain's seat currently occupied by John Kyl, who will resign the interim post at the end of this latest Congressional session.
On Tuesday, that scenario
came to fruition.
McSally will serve out the remaining two years of McCain's term, which expires in January 2021, and will face a special election for a full, six-year term in 2020.
"All her life, Martha has put service first — leading in the toughest of fights and at the toughest of times,” Ducey said in a Tuesday statement.
"With her experience and long record of service, Martha is uniquely qualified to step up and fight for Arizona’s interests in the U.S. Senate. I thank her for taking on this significant responsibility and look forward to working with her and Senator-Elect Sinema to get positive things done.”
McSally was considered a top prospect to replace Kyl, who was sworn into office in September, about a month after McCain died from brain cancer. He had hinted that he’d only serve in the Senate until the end of the year.
McSally, who made history as the first woman to fly a fighter jet in combat, was first elected to Congress in 2014.
This past election cycle underscored the GOP's issue with appealing to female voters, particularly in the era of Trump. And while McSally was initially rejected by Arizona voters, she has ample opportunity here the next two years to show she deserves to be sent back to Washington via the ballot box. Her impressive background is certainly a good start.
- I find the perpetual argument of the 1988 classic
Die Hard being a "Christmas movie" as utterly nonsensical. But that said,
I agree with Merris Soltis of The Resurgent in that it is most certainly
not a Christmas movie.
Fight me.
- As MC of the
Miss Minnesota pageant (within the Miss America system), I've taken a little more than a passing interest in the world of pageantry. With the Miss Universe pageant (a different system from Miss A) taking place over this past weekend, there was a lot of fanfare surrounding the first ever transgender woman (Angela Ponce of Spain) to hold a title within that organization.
The trans movement absolutely baffles me on many levels, not the least of which is women who battled for decades to attain "equality" are suddenly having to endure some men aspiring to actually
be women. The whole premise of the America feminist movement was that
women were uniquely oppressed and thus no man could understand their plight. So now do some men understand women so well that they can actually take on the female identity? I fail to ascertain that logic.
As Alexandra DeSanctis of National Review
points out, the trans movement essentially puts women back at square one, if not further back.
The wholehearted embrace of transgender ideology necessarily, and quite intentionally, erases womanhood. It allows biological males to don the mantle of femaleness simply by asserting that it is their birthright. There has never been a more patriarchal claim.
As the Democratic party drifts toward identity politics, a clash of these two identities looms on the horizon. In an “intersectional” movement where minority groups are given more currency for having experienced more oppression, women struggling against the patriarchy could easily be crowded out by transgender women who insist that their minority status and experience with stigma give them the victimhood trump card.
Perhaps the far Left believes that if its members force skeptics to nod along with Ponce’s pageantry, they can avoid the schisms inherent to a movement that claims to value feminism while insisting that being female has no meaning at all.
I often wonder how many proggie women are disgusted by the trans movement yet are hesitant to speak up due to the likelihood of being tarred with the label of bigotry. I'm willing to bet it's more than we're made to believe.
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