Benjamin Franklin, by Lex McKee, from the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Not entirely clear to me, yet, is why a few trite phrases keep rolling around in my head as we watch the turmoil among House Republicans. You know the sayings I’m talking about: those pat notions we hear as kids that teach us how to behave or what to believe. “Early-bird-gets-the-worm” kind of stuff.

Elise Stefanik, who has so benefited from Republicans’ loss of affection for Liz Cheney, is from right around our part of Upstate, so we all kind of know her. But that doesn’t explain why those trite aphorisms tumble about, threatening to pop out of my mouth whenever her face shows up in an unlikely place, like a network newscast. 

Maybe it’s because naked ambition is surely the most trite characteristic in politics. You might hope to be served in Congress by someone motivated by an impulse less, you know, shopworn. To be fair, ambition is trite because every politician is ambitious, and you can’t blame a 36-year-old in on…