Political rhetoric is the art of getting away with murder, making it look like suicide, then crashing the funeral luncheon dressed as the widow.

Consider the deft application of the stiletto in a June 10 news release from the Republican State Committee of Pennsylvania. Eileen Melvin, chairman of the party, is quoted on the subject of Bob Casey Jr., who, in her view, has been ducking such issues as "the recent antics of DNC Chairman Howard Dean."

"As Susan Sontag once stated, 'silence remains, inescapably, a form of speech,' " said Melvin. "Thus, Mr. Casey's silence on Chairman Dean's outrageous remarks can only be interpreted as such."

Sontag, who died last year, was a New York intellectual equally fond of telling authors what their books were about and instructing her nation on its many faults. Her brief essay on the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in The New Yorker gives a potent sense of her opinion about America's position in the world. You will not find the following words in the Republican Party platform:

"Where is the acknowledgement that this was not a 'cowardly' attack on 'civilization' or 'liberty' or 'humanity' or 'the free world' but an attack on the world's self-proclaimed super-power, undertaken as a consequence of specific American alliances and actions. ... In the matter of courage (a morally neutral virtue): whatever may be said of the perpetrators of Tuesday's slaughter, they were not cowards."

I know Eileen Melvin. We hail from the same coal-laced stretch of highway in the Alleghenies, and I knew she could never confuse Sontag for a Republican because where we come from, Sontag is just a Pennsylvania Dutch word for Sunday, "New Yorker" is invariably preceded by a colorful adjective instead of "The," and courage is not morally neutral.

I phoned Josh Wilson, Melvin's press secretary.

"So, Josh," I asked, "which is your favorite: 'Styles of Radical Will?' 'On Photography?' 'Notes on Camp?' "

"I'm sorry. I don't understand you."

"Susan Sontag."

"Oh, Susan Sontag. I guess the answer to that is I never read any of that stuff."

With characteristic good humor, Wilson admitted the quotation was -- and we must keep in mind that press secretaries are paid to do this sort of thing -- confected for Melvin.

"I was trying to find somebody liberal," Wilson said. "You caught me. In all honesty, we were obviously trying to illuminate our point on that. I was screwing around on the Internet and tried to find some good quotes that spoke to the issue."

When shoplifting someone's ideas for a political memo, it's best to make sure you pick something that can fit through the door. In the case of Sontag, her works are dense and require long strands of context to moor them to the subject under discussion. What comes before and after her quotation on silence, taken from an essay in her book, "Styles of Radical Will," explains why quoting Susan Sontag is not a thing lightly done.

"Silence remains, inescapably, a form of speech (in many instances, of complaint or indictment) and an element in a dialogue." The parentheses are Sontag's.

So Casey's silence might be an indictment of Dean. Or of Casey's putative opponent in next year's election, Rick Santorum. Or it might be part of whatever dialogue Casey and Santorum are now having, in which case Casey seems to be saying either that Santorum is unimportant, or the issues in the forthcoming Senate race are not yet clear, or that Howard Dean's histrionics have nothing to do with the United States Senate as it applies to Pennsylvania.

Let's take Sontag's essay, "The Aesthetics of Silence," a little further. In section XIII of her essay (the quote in Melvin's mouth is from Section IV), Sontag outlines the uses of silence. Let us quote and interpret:

"One use for silence: certifying the absence or renunciation of thought." Possibly Casey is ignoring or ignorant of the issues.

"Another, apparently opposed, use for silence: certifying the completion of thought." Possibly Casey has reached his conclusions and, in the words of Karl Jaspers, "breaks off genuine communication for the sake of what he believes in."

"Still another use for silence: furnishing or aiding speech to attain its maximum integrity or seriousness." Personally, I hope this is not the case, because with Republicans quoting Susan Sontag the race is suddenly getting fun in the way only a serious lack of seriousness can provide.

What is happening here is that the Republicans are filling the empty space in the forthcoming Senate race, attempting to define Bob Casey Jr. He is serious. He is quiet. He is therefore at the mercy of whatever public perception can be imposed upon him by his opponents, much as the Republicans took John Kerry, a man who pointed his patrol boat at the enemy in Vietnam and drove it straight at them, as both a waffler and a coward.

This will fill the space before the beginning of the contest, but while we're in the business of quoting Sontag, it is well to keep in mind that the work that made her famous was called "Against Interpretation." She was one of those aesthetes capable of recommending face value as a reasonable conclusion. Until Casey opens his mouth, let's find a better appreciation for his silence.