"I believe in an America where millions of Americans believe in an America that's the America millions of Americans believe in."

"That's the America I love."

Said Mitt Romney according to Doonesbury, which made fun of it, and Language Log's Geoffrey K. Pullum was initially inclined to mock, and then thought about it, and realized he agreed with it.

One thing that gave him second thoughts is that his co-blogger Mark Liberman had already processed the quote, using the sublime technique of sentence diagramming. Which is nice.

But the more important basis for second thinking is that when you get to Liberman's old post, you find out that Romney didn't even speak those words. Mark Steyn did, and he was purporting to paraphrase Romney, for humorous effect. Pullum found out he was laughing at Steyn and Steyn was trying to make us laugh, and suddenly the quote wasn't funny anymore. Pullum, the liberal, was initially enjoying laughing at Romney — and his vapid dorkiness — and then he found out he was laughing at something a big right-winger — Steyn — had intended as a joke. Hey, that's not funny!

Pullum regains his sense of self-liberalism and goes into 4th of July mode:

It's nearly the 4th of July.... I love being back in America. It's like slipping into an old pair of shoes that really fit.... I don't think I can find anything mistaken in the passage. I think I believe in that America too. God bless it, anyway.

His post ends with a note that it's completely rewritten, because he apparently had originally assumed Romney did say those words, hadn't seen Liberman's old post, and went the mockery.