In a combination of Bush administration fatigue and campaign season fatigue, lately a number of political cliches have begun grating on me. It's tough - when a particular state of political being drags on and on and on, we all run out of new words to describe it. Nonetheless, there are a few phrases I'm ready to declare tired and mockable, and I'm sure other people will have plenty to add.
Lately, a lot of things have been dying, rhetorically. Democracy has died, the Constitution has died, innocence has died. Whether rumors of those deaths are exaggerated or not, repetition has certainly killed the effectiveness of that phrase.
"The third rail of American politics." Recently, Social Security and immigration have been battling it out for the title of "third rail of American politics," but Medicare and a number of other issues have been so called. In fact, Gelf Magazine actually compiled a list a few months ago finding references to 12 third rails other than those I've mentioned. Does the phrase even have real meaning to people who don't spend much time in one of a few large cities? (Or who didn't see Beat Street at an impressionable age, I guess.)
Those are my candidates for Political Cliches That Must Go. Yours?