Only in Wisconsin.

A student wearing a Bret Favre jersey and a cheese hat stood up to ask Sen Clinton a question at her event near Green Bay, WI today – only he never quite spit out a question in more than 3 minutes.

At first, Sen Clinton and the crowd were amused. “Oh I love cheeseheads!” she said. “I just got a button which said ‘cheeseheads for Clinton.’ It’s a prized possession now.”

The student said he’d been at Clinton’s rally in Kenosha on Saturday. “I really wanted to ask you a question there, but you didn’t call on me,” he said. “I was just thinking when I got home, how the heck can I get Hillary’s attention?”

“You figured it out,” she said as the crowd laughed.

But as the long seconds piled up and the kid talked about everything from President Clinton and Chelsea’s Wisconsin campaigning to the local officials who were hosting the event, the crowd turned. When he just kept plowing through even after the Senator thanked him for his remarks, the catcalls started.

“Am I taking too long here?” he asked. Their response made it pretty clear what the crowd thought. “I actually do have a question for you, it’s a real simple one,” he said. But still, no question.

“I have these great photos,” he said, holding up a stack of print-outs. The crowd groaned. “I had a catastrophe in Kenosha last night. My camera lost it’s battery. I just want to get one photograph with you, that’s it.”

Senator Clinton promised the student a photograph after the event, and he mercifully took his seat.

Barack Obama defended the power of words against Hillary Clinton’s argument that talk is cheap this week, asking a Democratic gathering in Milwaukee, WI if “I have a dream,” or “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself” were just words. A good argument — one that had already been used, nearly verbatim, but Massachusetts Gov and Obama supporter Deval Patrick in a speech in 2006.

“‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,’” said Patrick in response to a similar criticism from his GOP opponent in the Governor’s race that year. “Just words?”

On a conference call, Clinton communications director Howard Wolfson said the incident undercuts a fundamental principle on which the Obama campaign is based. “Sen Obama is running on the strength of his rhetoric and the strength of his promises. And as we have seen in the last couple of days, he’s breaking his promises and his rhetoric isn’t his own,” he said.

Obama’s campaign fired back that Sen Clinton tossed out Obama’s signature “Fired Up and Ready to Go” line at an event in Davenport, IA in January (watch it here), and sent out an article arguing that she’s borrowed other candidates’ rhetoric in the past.

Obama embed Bonney Kapp reports that Obama was unapologetic. “Deval and I do trade ideas all the time. He’s occasionally used lines of mine, and I at a JJ dinner in Wisconsin used some words of his,” he said. “I don’t think that’s really the kind of stuff the workers here are concerned about.”

But he did acknowledge that maybe he should have given his friend and supporter credit, saying “I was on the stump and he had suggested we use these lines. I thought they were good lines. I’m sure I should have. Didn’t this time.”

The latest attack on Barack Obama from his main rival, Hillary Clinton, is that he is all talk - and talk doesn’t necessarily produce results. He may be able to deliver a good speech, but speeches don’t put food on the table. Obama has responded to this latest criticism in recent speeches, but at tonight’s Wisconsin State Democratic Founder’s Day Dinner, he reacted more forcefully and with greater passion than he has to date.

“The most important thing we can do right now is to reengage the American people in the process of governance. To get them excited and interested again in what works and what can work in our government, to make politics cool again and important again and relevant again. Don’t tell me words don’t matter,” he said, voice rising.

To hammer it home, Obama then evoked some of the most memorable lines from our nation’s greatest speeches to make the point that words can, in fact, matter and make a difference. “‘I have a dream!’ Just words. ‘We hold these truths to be self evident that all me are created equal.’ Just words. ‘We have nothing to fear but fear itself.’ Just words. Just speeches,” he said.

“It’s true that speeches don’t solve all problems, but what is also true is if we cannot inspire the country to believe again, then it doesn’t matter how many policies and plans we have, and that is why I am running for president of the United States of America, and that is why we just won 8 elections straight, because the American people want to believe in change again. Don’t tell me words don’t matter!”

It’s unclear if the candidate thinks his words are on par with those above spoken by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Abraham Lincoln, and FDR, but yesterday at a rally in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, Obama did agree that his oratory skills are above average.

“It’s true I give a good speech. What can I do? Nothing wrong with that,” he admitted. “But understand the reason why the ability to motivate people and inspire people is important because the problems we face right now are not technical…..The question is who can bring Democrats, Independents, and Republicans into a working majority to bring about change. That’s what I offer that [Senator Clinton] can’t do.”

Barack Obama released a new ad called “Desperate” today to dispel Hillary Clinton’s latest effort to show Wisconsin voters that Barack Obama has something to hide by refusing to debate her before Tuesday’s primary.

Something Wisconsin Governor (and Obama backer) Jim Doyle described as dirty politics. “For her to do this - claiming that Senator Obama somehow isn’t making himself available when he has been all over the state, and as we speak today, she has yet to even be in the state during the week leading up to this primary,” he said on a conference call yesterday**. “Fact is, he’s out here in the state having a one-sided debate right now and the only campaign she has going on in Wisconsin is negative TV ads,” he added later.

“Desperate” is Obama’s second ad set to air in the Badger State to respond to Clinton’s own second ad questioning Obama’s reasons for refusing a debate. The announcer starts by saying there have already been 18 debates with two more scheduled next week.

“Here’s the truth. Obama has a plan to protect Social Security benefits and the current retirement age. Hillary doesn’t. On health care, even Bill Clinton’s Labor Secretary says Obama covers more people than Hillary. And Obama sponsored a bill to end tax breaks for oil companies,” the announcer reads, responding to claims from the previous Clinton ad. “Tired of the same old politics? Vote for change we can believe in,” the ad ends.

In a media availability yesterday, Obama called debates an “exercise” that has become “predicatable.” He explained, “I could make the arguments on behalf of senator Clinton that she would make against me in a debate. We all know them. You guys could too. And I’m sure the same applies to the other side, on the other hand, when we have a chance to talk to voters directly, when we have a chance to give them a sense of where we want to take the country and that’s my priority in these closing weeks.”

**Senator Clinton will make her first trip to Wisconsin this week when she arrives later today to speak at the state Democratic Party’s Founders Day Dinner in Milwaukee, where Senator Obama will also be speaking.

There has been a lot of back and forth between the campaigns (with the press often as intermediaries) on adding more debates to the schedule. After the indecisive Super Tuesday outcome, Clinton accepted four debate invitations. Obama stalled, and after a few days of questions from the press, agreed to two. The candidate maintained that he could better utilize his time by greeting voters because they find the more the candidate campaigns, the better he does.

Not good enough for Clinton - who began running an ad in the state of Wisconsin, scolding Obama for not accepting a debate prior to the state’s contest on February 19th. Obama countered with his own ad, where the narrator reads, “After 18 debates, with two more coming, Hillary says Barack Obama is ducking debates? It’s the same old politics of phony charges and false attacks.”

Today at his Milwaukee media availability, I asked Obama about Clinton’s repeated claims that he is ducking debates. Here’s his response:

Senator Clinton put out yet another ad on debates today:

“Maybe he doesn’t want to explain why his health care plan leaves out 15 million people and Hillary’s covers everyone. Or why he voted to pass billions in Bush giveaways to the oil companies, but Hillary didn’t. Or why he said he might raise the retirement age and cut benefits for Social Security. But Hillary won’t. Why won’t Barack Obama debate these differences? Wisconsin deserves better.”

Expect this argument to continue - at least until the next scheduled debate on Thursday in Austin.

After a week of telling anyone who will listen that they’re willing to debate Barack Obama any time, any place, the Clinton campaign is putting its money where its mouth is in Wisconsin. They’re up with a TV ad called “Debate” that scolds Obama for failing to accept a head-to-head forum before Tuesday’s primary in Badger country.

The campaign insist Barack Obama has significant advantages in the state — he’s from neighboring Illinois, and there are strong pockets of youth votes in places like Madison and black votes in Milwaukee — but they’re not blowing off Wisconsin. Sen Clinton will camp out in the state starting on Saturday, and remain through Tuesday’s primary; meanwhile, President Clinton is campaigning in the state today.

Clinton is also up with a TV ad focused on her health care plan, and contrasting it with her opponent’s.

Barack Obama won all three contests that comprise the “Potomac Primary” today, as expected. Before the polls closed, the candidate left the ice and freezing rain of Northern Virginia and headed to the snowy midwest for a rally in Madison, Wisconsin.

“Today, the change we seek swept through Chesapeake and over the Potomac. We won the state of Maryland. We won the commonwealth of Virginia. And though we won in Washington, DC, this movement won’t stop until there’s change in Washington, DC, and tonight we’re on our way!” He told a crowd of some 18,000 on the campus of the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

But the candidate who has, does, and will continue to (according to senior advisor David Axelrod) consider himself the underdog in this race until the nominee is selected. And Obama made sure to tell Wisconsin voters this race is far from over.  “We know how much farther we have to go. We know it takes more than one night – or even one election – to overcome decades of money and the influence; the bitter partisanship and petty bickering that’s shut you out, let you down and told you to settle. We know our road will not be easy. But we also know that at this moment the cynics can no longer say that our hope is false. We have now won east and west, north and south, and across the heartland of this country we love. We have given young people a reason to believe, and we have brought the young at heart back to the polls who want to believe again.”

The frontrunner - according to the Obama campaign is still that hurdle known as Hillary Clinton and he’s still making the pitch to voters. “That’s the choice in this primary. It’s about whether we choose to play the game, or whether we choose to end it; it’s change that polls well, or change we can believe in; it’s the past versus the future. It’s about whether we’re looking backwards or whether we’re marching forward. And when I’m the Democratic nominee for President – that will be the choice we have in November,” he said, showing some degree of confidence.

The campaign is continuing to spread its message of hope, change, and unity here in Wisconsin this week, and then it’s on to Texas and Ohio, which the candidate talked about at the end of his speech tonight. “The voices of the American people have carried us a great distance on this improbable journey, but we have much further to go. Now we carry our message to farms and factories across this state, and to the cities and small towns of Ohio, to the open plains deep in the heart of Texas, and all the way to Democratic Convention in Denver; it’s the same message we had when we were up, the same message when were down; that out of many, we are one; that our destiny will not be written for us, but by us; and that we can cast off our doubts and fears and cynicism because our dreams will not be deferred; and our future will not be denied; and our time for change has come.”