Following Pat Buchanan's victory in New Hampshire, Bob Dole, Lamar Alexander and the Congressional leadership immediately resorted to the G.O.P.'s rhetorical equivalent of a tactical nuclear weapon against Mr. Buchanan by labeling him an extremist.

"This is the rhetorical equivalent of kissing a baby," he said.

But with just two weeks to go until the election, New Yorkers deserve something substantial, even if it is delivered in the rhetorical equivalent of a screech.

They are the rhetorical equivalents of tugging at the forelock (difficult to imagine in Cheney's case) in a kind of uppity modesty, as it were.

In the same way, I think it's terrific that they're making suits out there that don't have any --" he paused, executing the rhetorical equivalent of a grimace "-- sleeves, or whatever.

I'm not sure I have ever encountered a novel as heavily defended as "Lunar Park," which arrives surrounded by the rhetorical equivalent of moats, high walls and velvet ropes - an insecurity apparatus designed not to keep you out so much as to disarm your preconceptions.

The result has often been the rhetorical equivalent to the fog of battle, a fog in which women have been peculiarly absent, the ghosts of the debate.

This argument is the rhetorical equivalent of wearing a white three-piece suit in public, a way of attracting attention.

His attempt in Michigan to solve both problems at once was the rhetorical equivalent of Steve Martin's performance in "The Man with Two Brains."