Rightwing bloggers: Kennedy funeral will be ‘Wellstone memorial on steroids’

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President Obama called Congress’ “liberal lion,” Edward Kennedy, the “greatest United States senator of our time” — and his burial at Arlington National Cemetery will match that praise. But conservative bloggers are already complaining about his funeral, forecasting it’ll be a “Wellstone memorial on steroids.”

A post at the blog JammieWearingFool, amplified by Instapundit, appears to coin the phrase, in this context at least: “While we have no doubt the Democrats will do all they can to exploit his death and will probably have a Wellstone memorial on steroids, we’ll stay above that.”

But the phrase isn’t new: Rush Limbaugh used it to criticize Dems in a January interview with Fox’s Sean Hannity.

Paul Wellstone’s name also appears in a piece about Kennedy’s passing by The Economist, which includes the late Minnesota senator among statesmen like Adlai Stevenson, Edmund Muskie and George McGovern — “men who refused to compromise or triangulate in the Clinton style, and who made no apology for their beliefs.” The piece calls Kennedy the “last” of that clan, asking who’ll carry the torch now. (Two answers: Sen. Russ Feingold of Wisconsin and Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich.)