"Stop digging."

[Charles C Doyle]

On the motif--if not the proverb "When you're in a hole, stop digging" or the phrase "Rule of Holes":

1911  _Washington Post_ 25 Oct.:  "Nor would a wise man, seeing that he was in a hole, go to work and blindly dig it deeper, as [William Jennings] Bryan did when he shifted ground and assailed the integrity of the President and the Judges."

1893  _Puck_ (New York) 22 Feb.:  "Mindful that our good name goes with our gold, these men have decided it to be good politics to keep the silver question open for the next Congress to shut.  They argue, with a logic peculiarly Republican:  'The country is in a hole; let us dig the hole deeper, and make the sides slippery, so that those whom the people have so unanimously and foolishly chosen to follow us, may have a harder time to pull it out.'"

--Charlie

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