One of these things is not like the others.

Miss me, friends? I’m having a great time in the classroom again with my students, but clearly I need to figure out how it was that I was once able to manage my day job and to blog daily.  Maybe I was younger?  Maybe I felt like I had fresh ideas once upon a time?

Although I didn’t liveblog or Tweet about it, I watched the Republican debate Wednesday night from start to finish.  I thought it was both highly entertaining and permitted the candidates to stake out and articulate their positions.  There were some very important differences among the Republicans on the main stage–on federalism (good according to Mike “Two Buck” Huckabee when it permits a state to resist marriage equality, and bad according to Chris Christie when it permits Coloradoans to spark up without fear of Johnny Law), on U.S. borders and whether it’s good or bad to speak Spanish, on the previous decade-plus of warfare and other intervention in the Middle East, and on the most important question of the night:  whether to honor your wife or your mother by putting her face on a sawbuck.  (Srsly?)

I miss Rick Perry, but only because he was the closest thing to a handsome man anywhere near that stage.  I’ve also decided that Rand Paul looks like just about every boy I had a crush on in high school in the 1980s, with pretty much the same haircut too.  (Don’t judge.)

But this is a blog written by a women’s historian, and there is a woman running for President again on the Republican side, so let’s talk about Carly Fiorina and her interesting offensive on motherhood last night.  Amanda Marcotte wonders “What Was Up with Carly Fiorina’s Grisly Abortion Rant?” in the debate last night.  I don’t think it’s so difficult to guess–Fiorina is the only person on the stage who didn’t have children of her own.  While the male Republican candidates eruped in a patronizing ooze about their wives and families when given the opportunity to introduce themselves to the general public, each of them name-checking their wives and most listing their children by name, Fiorina was at a disadvantage in the DNA-bestowing contest. Continue reading →