Take a deep breath!

[WatchWhatISay]

There seems to be a new phrase coming out of the mouth of Repub operatives. Take a deep breath!

I first heard it when Wolf Blitzer was interviewing Joe Wilson the other day. It struck me as odd because at the time Blitzer said it, Joe Wilson had been speaking in a very calm and dignified manner, as he usually does. There was absolutely no indication that he had been losing or about to loose his cool at all.

Then yesterday Ken Mehlman used the phrase on one of the Sunday talkshows, as in Dems ought to take a deep breath about this whole affair.

Just a few minutes ago I heard Mitch McConnel being interviewed on CNN, and he used the phrase again.

[Sierra925]

1. Great marketing technique...

It works. We should take lessons.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

15. The Counter Meme (Frame) is: Bush Failed to Fire Rove . . . nt

[blm]

2. It's supposed to mean. "Dems are panicking hysterically."

Slimy, lying, focking chickenhawk robber barons.

[skids]

3. Good Catch!

Comebacks, anyone?

maybe:

"I can breath just fine without advice from you."

"Why? There's plenty of oxygen in the room for everyone."

or maybe just, "Who told you to say that, the RNC?"

[AlwaysQuestion]

4. How observant of you to notice what seems to be a pattern

How did Wilson respond to the new catch phrase? I don't think I'd've let that one pass. Of course, Wilson doesn't need any lessons on how to deal with Blitz I'm sure. Do you recall Wilson's next words?

[WatchWhatISay]

5. No, there was no chance for a repsonse

As Wolf said it just before he went to a commercial.

[jean]

6. (Shut up and) take a breath? This is dismissive , demeaning to the speaker

Making the speaker shrink - what the speaker is saying isn't important, they're yammering, babbling - 'shut up already and take a breath.'

It's the RNC and their think tanks exercising the dominant male thing - they're masculine, fit for leadership.

We're - hey take a breath - weak, not worth listening to , 'feminine' (they feminized Kerry constantly last year and it apprently worked with some people) - we're not fit for leadership either.

so how does one combat this? And can we collect these instances and post online?

[skids]

8. We should, really...

...but it is a time consuming, methodical process... not the kind of thing people normally volunteer to do for free.

It works very well when you take the conflicting/morphing statements and run them together in one big video clip. Lately MSM caught onto this Daily Show trick with the "ongoing investigation" MClellan loop.

Imagine if before the 2006 races we had these embarrassing loops already prepared for most repug candidates?

[jean]

13. it would be a magnificent tool, esp if we could fire short loops out

quickly (like the Daily Show does, only without much humor)

- and ESPECIALLY if we could easily demonstrate 'reporters' like Blitzer cooperate with and use RNC talking points. How great would it be if we could foment a little war between media outlets - who would scrabble to prove their talking heads speak with originality and not from the RNC script.

[WatchWhatISay]

12. Here is the transcript from the Blitzer interview

BLITZER: You wrote a separate letter, which we've read, to the chairman, vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, making these points.

Did you ever get a response to them? Because their conclusion was very hard and fast, that it was your wife who came up with the idea.

WILSON: One of the things I asked them to do was go out and re- interview an officer who they had quoted as saying that she had dropped my name into the hat or she had suggested me. He went to see her and said that he had not said that and he wished for an opportunity to correct the record. As far as I know, they never did.

But the response to your direct question...

BLITZER: What would have been so bad if your wife would have recommended you to go to Niger for this investigation.

WILSON: Of course, from my perspective, it wouldn't have been bad at all. This was a legitimate request to answer a national security question. I was well qualified to do so. Indeed as the Senate Select Committee report says, I had made a trip in 1999 to Niger to look into other uranium-related matters, so I was well known to the CIA.

BLITZER: I want you to take a breath, because we're going to take a breath ourselves. We're going to take a quick break. We have more questions to ask Ambassador Joe Wilson. He's sticking around. Please stay with us.

Also coming up, . . .

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0507/14/wbr.01.html





And here is the transcript from Mehlman saying it:

MR. RUSSERT: "They were not involved." Is that comment still operative?

MR. MEHLMAN: Well, Tim, I know Scott McClellan very well. Scott's a smart guy. He's an honest guy. He's a very effective spokesman. And he'd love to be on this show this morning commenting. But in contradiction to what he said, attack, attack, attack is not how we'll respond to this investigation. This White House is responding by cooperate, cooperate, cooperate. And what Scott understands and all of us understand as attorneys is that the last thing a prosecutor wants to see are people out talking about the facts of his case. And so Scott is now not commenting. But the fact is--what the facts this week show is what Scott said is accurate. The facts show that Karl Rove was not the source of Bob Novak, that there was another source that, in fact, leaked the information to him, and that Karl Rove at the time didn't know her name, didn't know she was undercover and didn't provide that information to him.

So that's why John's comments--and I'm disappointed to hear him say it this morning--are so outrageous, that Karl Rove shouldn't be working in the White House. The information exonerates and vindicates, it does not implicate, and what we should all do is take a breath, not rush to judgment and certainly not try to make political gain of an investigation that we should have confidence in the investigator for.


http://blog.dccc.org/mt/archives/2005_07.html

[eleny]

7. Yeah, now they want us to inhale

[PurityOfEssence]

10. Tee-hee-hee

The only thing consistent is thinking our way.

Good one.

[PurityOfEssence]

9. Calm down, stop thinking; for once we don't want you to stampede

We know better. Relax. It's nothing but sour grapes from losers who can't figure out how to properly steal elections.

[bunny planet]

11. Seems like the repubes should be the ones hyperventilating. This story

ain't going away. Take a deep breath Republicons.

[WatchWhatISay]

14. Oh Boy! Look where they got it from!

Did some google work and look what I found:

The six Democratic senators from New York, New Jersey and Connecticut signed a letter to Mr. Rove demanding that he apologize. At a press conference June 23 to announce the letter, the four from New York and New Jersey said Mr. Rove should be fired if he didn’t apologize by June 24. “There’s a certain line that you should not cross, and last night, Karl Rove crossed that line. He didn’t just put his toe over the line; he jumped way over,” said Sen. Charles E. Schumer of New York. “This makes me angry. It makes, I think, the American people angry,” said Sen. Jon Corzine of New Jersey. “The man is divorced from reality, and it’s nothing but pure politics — the politics of diversion, the politics of divisiveness and distortion.”

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York was asked about the recent Beltway battles over rhetoric, including the Durbin flap and said both parties need to “just take a breath and calm down.”

http://www.americasnewspaper.com/top.shtml

Ironically, the google search led me to and Freeperville where this article was posted.