"If reporters are combative, I'll be combative right back," he told me in February.
But she was combative right back, and kept arguing, with ardor and sometimes anger, at times interrupting and overriding Mr. Obama's words and even the moderators'.
The real obstacle could lie in the GOP-controlled House, where a combative right flank has rejected many bills over the issue of spending.
Even Cruz, a take-no-prisoners leader of the party's combative right wing, has acknowledged that arithmetical reality; in a recent newspaper column, he said full repeal would have to await the election of a Republican president in 2016.
Flanked by his often combative right-hand man, George Sorial, he began gently, thanking the committee for the opportunity to appear.
Stewart, uncharacteristically serious in tone, exposed the limitations of combative left-right political conversation.
Wednesday morning, the candidate confirmed that he was hiring Breitbart News' combative, far-right Chief Executive Steven Bannon to run his campaign.
Yes, in many ways he's turned out to be a combative little right-winger, but his success in reversing Colombia's slide toward becoming a failed narco-state has boosted the confidence and optimism of rich and poor alike, and pretty much coated the president with Teflon; recent approval ratings have topped 80percentt, and this excellent jungle adventure no doubt will boost them yet higher.
The New Jersey governor was, as advertised, energetic, and combative, and played right to the heart of his constituency – err, I mean Mr. Romney's constituency – on the far right of the Republican Party.
First and foremost, college basketball is a coach-dominated sport and, already 48 but with a long, credentialed coaching life ahead of him, here was Calhoun in all his combative and controlling glory, right down to orchestrating the hero's postgame explanation.
By the time he became MP for solidly safe and loyal Leeds SE (later Leeds East) in 1952, he was transformed into a combative figure on the right of the party, identified with pro-American, pro-Nato sentiments: Russian subversion of postwar East European regimes had converted Healey to deterrence and containment.
