Our thanks to less than alert readers who may have let some of these gems of rhetoric, both genuine and synthetic, get past them this election year. For instance, who said:
"Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake." (a) Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (b) Napoleon Bonaparte (c) former President Dwight D. Eisenhower (d) current President Barack Obama. Answer: Napoleon Bonaparte.
"You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time." Is that attributed to (a) Donald Trump (b) Abraham Lincoln (c) Barack Obama (d) Hillary Clinton. Answer: Abraham Lincoln.
"If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. If you like your health-care plan, you can keep your health-care plan." (a) Barack Obama (b) Hillary Clinton (c) George Washington (d) Mike Pence, Donald Trump's uneasy running mate. Answer: Barack Obama.
Donald Trump "will absolutely accept the result of the election." (a) Aaron Burr (b) Benedict Arnold (c) George Wallace (d) Mike Pence. Answer: Mike Pence. How assuring, if not assuring enough.
Who said, "This is a coup d'etat. Fourteen million citizens and private ballots picked Donald Trump, 20 TV executives have decided to destroy him." (a) former speaker of the House Newt Gingrich (b) former Speaker of the House Henry Clay (c) former speaker of the House Sam Rayburn (d) former speaker of the House Thomas B. Reed. Answer: the irrepressible Newt Gingrich, who's back in the news again like a bad penny.
Who said, "Workers of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains." (a) Karl Marx (b) Groucho Marx (c) Chico Marx (d) Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts. Answer: Karl Marx, who claimed he, too, had it all figured out.
Who said, "I think that without the unending one-sided assault of the news media, Trump would be beating Hillary by 15 points." (a) Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont (b) former Vice President Spiro T. Agnew (c) Wikileaks (d) former President Bill Clinton. Answer: None of the above. That was Newt Gingrich again. For it's hard to keep a bad man down.
Who asked, "Who are you going believe, me or your lying eyes?" (a) Hillary Clinton (b) her running mate Tim Kaine (c) former president George W. Bush (d) Russian president and current star Vladimir Putin. Answer: None of the above. It was that sage political observer, Groucho Marx.
Who said, "Hillary and I stand up for the integrity of our elections. Hillary and I stand against Russian efforts to meddle in the American election." (a) Tim Kaine (b) Mike Pence (c) former American secretary of state Henry Kissinger (d) one-time governor of Arkansas Orval Faubus. Answer: Tim Kaine.
Who said, "I could never see myself voting for Hillary because I'm so pro-life and her idea of Supreme Court justices just makes me nervous. But hearing the vulgarity and wretched talk from Donald Trump makes me run in another direction." Talk about mixed emotions, those were expressed by (a) Rev. Don Hutchings of the Evangel Temple in Fort Smith, Ark. (b) the archangel Gabriel, who as far as is known is not registered to vote in this state (c) the Mormon Tabernacle Choir (d) an interfaith committee representing the mainstream denominations of Arkansas. Answer: Rev. Hutchings.
So what to do? According to Rev. Hutchings: "My advice to the church is pray like you've never prayed."
Our own considered editorial opinion: Amen.
Editorial on 10/23/2016