The Patriot Post® · Friday Short Cuts

Insight: “Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.” —Aristotle (384-322 BC)

Observations: “If [Carly] Fiorina rises, so, too, will Marco Rubio. Fiorina might have won the debate, but Rubio won Bush donors over along with others. He showed himself again to be a fresh face with new ideas and also a storyteller. People should not underestimate storytelling. The governors on the stage talked about their records. They talked about 2.5 million this, 100,000 that, so much cut, and so much saved. Rubio talked about his immigrant grandfather fleeing the communist uprising in Cuba. His grandfather spoke no English, but told Rubio to commit to America. Instead of talking data on global warming, Rubio talked about the economic impact on the poor and middle class. On ISIS, he did not cite troop numbers, but talked about safe havens. Republicans often lament no storytellers in their ranks. Here is a storyteller who connects with people through those stories.” —Erick Erickson

Braying Jenny: “The evil genius of [Carly] Fiorina … is her uncanny ability to play the gender warrior within the GOP while promoting the party’s misogyny. … [H]er feminism seems to begin and end with the fortunes of Fiorina herself, and seeing as she probably doesn’t rely on Planned Parenthood for her health care, she’s happy to deprive millions of women of that care by promoting outright lies about the organization, as in her false description of the video she referenced.” —American Prospect columnist Adele M. Stan

Talk about sore losers: “[I]f presidential campaigns were decided by fact checkers, Al Gore would have won in a landslide.” —Vox’s Ezra Klein

Non Compos Mentis: “[Y]ou wanna know who really won that debate? Hillary Clinton. … Clinton is putting forward policy after policy that address America’s great problems. These people are just making stuff up.” —The Daily Beast’s Michael Tomasky

And last… “Hillary Clinton banked on the First Woman President effect from the start — an understandable gambit for someone with no substantive accomplishments and many flaws. Her sex may be the only thing she hasn’t lied about.” —Mona Charen