Ed Gillespie Uses Sarah Palin-coined Word on Face the Nation

Back during the Bush era, one of the political tactics used in campaigns was for Republicans to use their opponents' strengths against them.  John Kerry was a war hero, so they "swift boated" him, trying to paint his military past as a weakness.  This continues today of course, but there's a weirder new element at play.  Now, they're remaking a candidates weaknesses into strengths. Remember when Sarah Palin wrote on her hand?  It would have been embarrassing for most candidates, but Palin now regularly--and proudly--sports cutesy things on her hand at events. 

Palin is also known for her. . .let's say rambling. . .speaking style.  Even in prepared comments, she can wander from topic to topic, speaking sentences dozens of words long.  She uses commas and semi-colons but few periods.  And she also coins new words.  Her latest, "refudiate" instead of "repudiate" has appeared in her speech and her writing, so it isn't just an articulation problem.  She wore the gaffe as a badge of honor.  I wouldn't be surprised if there were an effort afoot to have refudiate added to dictionaries as an alternate spelling or pronunciation.  Remember George W. Bush's awkward mispronunciation of "nuclear" as "new-kyoo-ler?"  There was at least a minor effort to have that one added to dictionaries.

Meanwhile, high-level Republican operatives can help Palin out by using her newly-coined word themselves. Pretty soon, everybody will be doing it, just like they say Democrat Party, death tax, cap-and-tax or call Karl Rove The Architect rather than Turd Blossom.

[Excerpt]

Gillespie Claims NY Times And Wash. Post Have ‘Refudiated’ ThinkProgress On Secret Corporate Spending





On Face the Nation this morning, host Bob Schieffer grilled both White House advisor David Axelrod and GOP strategist Ed Gillespie on the millions of dollars being secretly funneled by Wall Street and the oil industry to defeat Democratic candidates this November, and particularly the role of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Gillespie, along with Karl Rove, is the mastermind behind American Crossroads, a group tied to the Chamber which also funnels corporate money into attack ads. As first revealed by a ThinkProgress report, the Chamber solicits funds from foreign corporations — including state-owned oil companies — that go into the same general account that funds their $75 million electioneering campaign. Using a neologism coined by Sarah Palin, Gillespie argued that the Washington Post and the New York Times had “completely refudiated” the report. . .

Read more at: Think Progress