"Anything as perfect and simple-sounding as this motto is always in danger of becoming a cliché..."

"...  but there’s nothing like putting it in the mouths of politicians to speed up that process."

What's the point of a catchphrase? You want it to catch on and then you want to control it? Speech doesn't work like that. Words have a life of their own. Phrases are born, have their narrative arcs, and sometimes they die — that is, they come to be regarded as clichés, and then no one wants to use them anymore.

The dispute at the link is over the Mitt Romney's use of “Clear eyes, full hearts, can’t lose" from the TV show “Friday Night Lights.”

Hey, remember when Walter Mondale appropriated "Where's the beef?" from the Wendy's commercial? Where was the outrage?

"When will ‘The Kathleen’ Falk and Tom Barrett get their Walter Mondale on?"

Asks David Blaska, very intraWisconsinly, except to the extent that Walter was over there in that state that looms to our left.

Rush Limbaugh goes after Krauthammer.

On the occasion of Krauthammer's disrespect for Sarah Palin:

Krauthammer was on Fox the other day, I happened to see it. He said that Sarah Palin still doesn't cut it for him.  She's got good instincts but she's just not properly schooled.  And he said I don't mean schooled in the right places.  She's just not learned.  She's had two and a half years to school herself on matters of policy.  She hasn't done it.  She can't demonstrate it.  She's just not properly schooled.  And Tom Rowan, "Analyzing the Analyst" in the American Thinker, says why in the world do we sit here and bow down at the opinion of somebody that used to write speeches for Walter Mondale. 

Now, Rowan's theory is that people's pasts matter.  So here you have Dr. Krauthammer, who was a speechwriter for Mondale who obviously at a point in his life thought Ronald Reagan was a total idiot, you know, probably not schooled.  So Rowan's theory is, analyzing the analysts, that Krauthammer sees Reagan in Palin.  Wasn't particularly enamored of Reagan.  George Will was not an early Reaganite, for example, became a good friend and associate later on.  But this got me to thinking about this whole notion of who earns respect and why.  And Mr. Rowan, the American Thinker, said, why is it that everybody stops what they're doing and when Krauthammer issues an opinion that's it?...

Now, Krauthammer in many ways has acquired this respect because in many of the venues he appears he's the only conservative....

The segment at the link begins and ends with thoughts on Weinergate, by the way. Read the whole thing if you want to see how he weaves these themes together.

Another boring Democratic loser calls criticism of Obama racist.

"I don't want to pick a person, say, he's a racist, but I do think the way they're piling on Obama, the harshness, you kind of feel it. I think I see an edge in them that's a little bit different and a little harsher than I've seen in other times."

This time it's Walter Mondale, and you've got to at least give him credit for speaking in the most mealy-mouthed and boring way possible.

Jeez, I almost feel like calling it mush from the wimp.