The Republican Puppet Master

As is often the case, the Republicans spoke with one resounding voice at yesterday's Health Care Summit, and that voice said, "Start over". From the Daily Show to Hardball, news outlets picked up on this and spliced together clip after clip of the Republicans invited to partake in the ceremonies yesterday employing the tried and true method of:

1. Testing issue framing and language.
2. Crafting a simple message based on the results of that testing.
3. Repeating it over and over again.

John Boehner, Mitch McConnell, John McCain, Lamar Alexander, Paul Ryan, Eric Cantor, and the rest of the creepy talk bots all got in line and parroted the preselected and well rehearsed party message, “Start over”.

Anyone familiar with Frank Luntz's work immediately knew what the score was. A quick Google search for "Frank Luntz Start Over" directs to his October 2009 memo detailing "Words That Work" for the ongoing healthcare debate. It is the updated version of his original piece, "The Language of Healthcare" from May 2009 which was responsible for such catchy 2009 phrases as "Washington bureaucrats standing between you and your doctor" and "Washington takeover of healthcare". Over the last year Americans have heard these phrases and many like them--all of which emanated from the Luntz doctrine-- repeated ad nauseum by Republican politicians and pundits alike in an attempt to sway public opinion, and thus the actual scope of the bills, while Congress was attempting to craft legislation on the issue.

That yesterday's talking points came from Luntz was a lock, they just had to be located in the updated playbook. Sure enough, on page 7 of the Luntz memo in the "Words That Work" section, yesterday's mantra was outlined. (The words and phrases in bold type below were those regurgitated and repeated most often at the Summit).

"Most Americans wanted to hear the president tell Speaker Pelosi, Majority Leader Reid and the rest of Congress that it's time to start over on a common-sense, bipartisan plan focused on lowering the cost of health care while improving quality. That's what I've heard over the past several months, in talking to thousands of my constituents."

Unsurprisingly, the message incorporates a pot shot at President Obama, attempting to take him down a peg by alluding that he doesn't have the courage to stand up to the right's favorite punching bags, Pelosi and Reid, and thereby grouping him with the hated liberal Congressional leadership.

Also particularly interesting is the part about “hearing it” from thousands of their constituents over the past several months. Identical verbiage was repeated tirelessly by the right yesterday during the meeting. This is no doubt true of course, so long as you replace "heard in talking with thousands of my constituents" with "read in a memo that I got from Frank Luntz".

Why this isn't trumpeted through the megaphones of the liberal news outlets is perplexing. Exposing the right for what they are, as a consortium of politicians so hopelessly out of touch with the people they purport to represent that they need to be told what to say, and so spineless that they can be told what to say is powerful stuff; especially when the marching orders are based on the results of focus group testing and orchestrated from on high by some porky little schlub like Luntz. The notion itself is incongruent and inimical with the Republican image of strength and individualism.

MSNBC should be running a split screen picture of Luntz on one side and clips of Republican congress members parroting Luntz’s words on the other. Luntz’s words should be streaming across the bottom of the screen with a little white ball bouncing over them like in the old Cal Worthington commercials as they’re regurgitated by the GOP talking heads. And they should run it twenty hours a day as if Luntz were Jeremiah Wright with a giant caption across the top of the screen that reads, “The Republican Puppet Master”.

This is the hammer that shatters the sacred stained glass window of Ronald Reagan that watches proudly over the Republican Party. Someone needs to pick it up and start swinging. Now.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/21886488/Frank-Luntz-Memo