This is why we should have kept the property qualification for voting.

Hat tip to the News Junkie.

Richard Dreyfuss in front row at Ted Cruz rally.

The actor, well known for portraying Dick Cheney as a villain, provoked alarm in Hollywood by showing up last Saturday at a Ted Cruz rally in Iowa.

Dallas Morning News:

AMES, Iowa — Oscar-winning actor Richard Dreyfuss – star of Jaws and Mr. Holland’s Opus – was on hand, somewhat inexplicably. He quietly nabbed a reserved front-row seat as Cruz made his own entrance. Afterward, in a brief interview, he said he wasn’t there to support Cruz and isn’t supporting any candidate.

“It’s the politics of my country, so I’m interested,” he said.

“No,” he said, when it was pointed out that his presence suggested support. “It suggests that I’m interested in what he has to say.”

“We come at it from different places. But he reveres the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. When you seek to be the president of a country that has 300 million people, you can’t get everyone on the same platform. You can’t. But if you can make it clear that the most important things are shared, then fine.”

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So upset with this evidence of ideological treason was the entertainment community that Dreyfuss’s son felt obliged to defend his father at the Puffington Host:

My father, actor Richard Dreyfuss, is taking heat for attending a Ted Cruz rally. I shouldn’t have to write this, but here goes: curiosity is not a sin.

My father went to a Ted Cruz rally. My father also won an oscar in the ’70s, and his name is Richard Dreyfuss. Those two things are only related because by virtue of being famous, my father’s attendance at a Cruz rally got written about by a couple of media outlets. Those write-ups were absorbed by a number of mouth-breathers, and so began The Dumb.

Let me clarify. When asked if his being there suggested he supported Cruz, he responded, “It suggests that I’m interested in what he has to say… It’s the politics of my country, so I’m interested.” This seems like a pretty clear answer to me. I don’t necessarily endorse these views, but I’m curious about them because they are poised to have a very big effect on me and my country.

But clarity be damned, the same day as those articles were published I started getting calls and complaints asking me why my father was a Ted Cruz supporter. This is where we should leave the story of “Richard Goes To Ted Talk” behind, and just start talking about the principle of the thing. I’m really not trying to talk about my dad. I just want to address The Dumb.

It is not shocking that people mistake curiosity with support, but it is pathetic and it is tragic.

If you can’t stand to listen to an idea, it does not prove that you oppose it. Refusing to show interest in a different perspective should not serve as a badge of pride in your own ideas. It actually serves the exact opposite function. It proves that you don’t even understand your own opinion. If you can’t understand the argument you disagree with, then you don’t have the right to disagree with it with any authority, nor do you really have a grasp on what your own idea means in its context.

I’m not saying all ideas need to be validated, or even respected. There are absolutely some beliefs that simply deserve to be tarred and feathered and never given the time of day. Bigotry falls under this umbrella. But when some ideas are so prevalent that they hold huge sway over your own country, you’re an idiot if you decide to stuff your ears with your fingers and start humming.

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As Christopher Buckley noted on Facebook:

Wunst they wuz a little actor, an Oscar he din’t lose:–
An’ when he went to hear a speech by Texas Sen’r Cruz,
His fans was heerd ta holler, an’ the left was heerd to bawl,
An’ when sonny said “he’s curious!”, they din’t believe a’tall!
An’ they hounded him in Hollywood, an’ Twitter, an’ the press,
An’ angry talk’d at tha Whole Foods, an’ ever’-wheres, I guess;
But all they ever found wuz thist his pants an’ roundabout:–
An’ the Liber-urls ‘ll git you
Ef you
Don’t
Watch
Out!

Quinn Hillyer, like a lot of the rest of us, is tired of listening to sore losers whining.

[T]here was Ben Carson calling a press conference to complain about Cruz’s somewhat misleading email to caucus captains that could be read, between the lines, to be suggesting Carson would soon withdraw from the race. But once he got into the presser, Carson tried to make it sound as if he wanted to move on, but that it was the media trying to pit candidates against each other like gladiators in an arena. Neat trick: Call a press conference to complain while saying you’re not the one complaining.

But of course, nobody could top Donald Trump for over-the-top sour-grapeness. The surprise loser of the Iowa evening went so far as to demand a re-vote vote in the Hawkeye State or, barring that, a disqualification of all Cruz’s votes, on the grounds that Cruz supposedly “stole” the election. “If you think about it, I really finished first,” Trump claimed to a crowd in Little Rock.

Yeah, right — and when Muhammad Ali knocked Sonny Liston to the canvas, it was really Liston who was the victor.

All of this is a sorry spectacle. It contrasts with the dignified exits of candidates Mike Huckabee, Rand Paul and Rick Santorum, with Santorum also offering an entirely positive endorsement for Rubio with nary a bad word about anybody. While Republicans should of course want candidates who don’t like to lose, they surely don’t want candidates who don’t know how to take a loss.

Forgive the old-fashioned use of gender images, but there was a time when real men would move on from a loss with gracious fortitude. Think of golfer Jack Nicklaus smilingly congratulating rivals Lee Trevino and Tom Watson when they broke his heart with unlikely chip-ins, and you get the picture of how setbacks ought to be handled.

From the Onion.

Hat tip to John Brewer.

Kurt Schlichter imagines what it would be like to wake up in January next year looking a Trump presidency.

So, Donald Trump pulled it off, and though he would never, ever admit it, no one was more surprised than he to be shivering in the January cold with his hand on the Bible taking the oath of office from a grim Chief Justice Roberts. Vice-President Marco Rubio looked on, his own thoughts concealed behind the same bland smile that had been pasted on his face since the “Republican Unity Ticket” was announced in Cleveland in July. Ted Cruz, at home in Texas, was re-watching John Wayne in “The Searchers.” Sarah Palin was invited but could not make it; one of her family members had a court appearance.

The decisive defeat of Hillary Clinton in November was the greatest humiliation in a life marked by serial humiliations – failing the District of Columbia Bar Exam, being cuckolded by Bill while he was in office, losing to Barack Obama, and now being beaten by Donald Trump. She ignored her advisors at the first debate; so certain was she in her own moral and intellectual superiority that she tried to take him head-on. All America remembered about that debate was her look of utter mortification as The Donald dismissed her as a “doormat who Putin and the mullahs are gonna step all over just like Bill did.” She pulled out of the remaining debates because of his “sexism” even as she was greeted at every public campaign event (until she stopped having them) with hordes of Trump fans waving doormats with her face emblazoned upon them.

Read the whole thing.