Re-Forming a New Form of Reform

Joe Weisenthal at Business Insider highlighted a marvelous piece of empty rhetoric from this year’s Presidential race.

It comes from a position paper issued by the Romney-Ryan campaign. One section on page 6 reads, in total:

End “Too-Big-To-Fail” And Reform Fannie Mae And Freddie Mac: The Romney-Ryan plan will completely end “too-big-to-fail” by reforming the GSEs. The four years since taxpayers took over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, spending $140 billion in the process, is too long to wait for reform. Rather than just talk about reform, a Romney-Ryan Administration will protect taxpayers from additional risk in the future by reforming Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and provide a long-term, sustainable solution for the future of housing finance reform in our country.

That’s six uses of the word “reform” in three sentences and a headline. But not one specific detail about what that “reform” might be or how the Romney-Ryan program would differ from what President Obama has already done. It’s almost as if the campaign believes that if it repeats a buzzword often enough, their voters will believe they know what it means.