While managers and minders may have bridled at his combative approach – he demanded total access before accepting an assignment – performers seemed to have sensed, in his upfront attitude and commitment to his craft, a kindred spirit.
Taking a humorously combative stance, the magazine demanded that the Captains, Committee Chairs, and other administrators justify their sense of self-importance which it often delighted in deflating.
Ryan will be the Party's next leader because his style is perfectly suited to its demands: purist, inflexible, combative, and untroubled by any complicating fact.
It was unclear whether dissolving Parliament would succeed in quelling public outrage over corruption or whether new elections would usher in an even more combative legislature with more assertive demands for political change.
Mr. Yang, formerly a novelist and a businessman involved in publishing, has been among the members of China's human rights advocacy movement who favor a more combative approach and more ambitious demands.
Democrats dismissed complaints that Mr. Obama had been overly combative, noting that Republicans had demanded that he engage in the bargaining process, and then criticized him as soon as he did.
Floridians of all parties should, in particular, demand that their combative Republican legislators cease efforts to subvert the will of the voters, should the renewed ballot count show that Mr. Gore won Florida.
You also had some very combative strikes during this period demanding increased salaries and targeting the new owners of privatized factories.
Winners are in demand, no matter how combative.
I think it's the way he demands people play – that they are combative.
He has been in a combative mood since the West's much-resented demand that he accept that his re-election was marred by massive vote-rigging.
