Frank Luntz discovers reality-based science

June 27, 2006

As Faiz noted, GOP pollster/consultant Frank Luntz, as recently as 2000, encouraged his Republican clients to not only be skeptical of global warming, but to plant seeds of doubt with the public. As one infamous Luntz memo advised:

Voters believe there is no consensus about global warming within the scientific community. Should the public come to believe that the scientific issues are settled, their views about global warming will change accordingly. Therefore you need to continue to make the lack of scientific certainty a primary issue in the debate, and defer to scientists and other experts in the field.

The Bush White House embraced the strategy enthusiastically, but fortunately, it appears that Luntz has come around. From a BBC documentary:

NARRATOR: Today, Frank Luntz says the advice he offered the administration on global warming was fair when he gave it. But, he’s distanced himself from their policies since.

LUNTZ: It’s now 2006. Now I think most people would conclude that there is global warming taking place, and that the behavior of humans are affecting the climate.

QUESTION: But the administration has continued to follow your advice. They’re still questioning the science.

LUNTZ: That’s up to the administration. I’m not the administration. What they want to do is their business. And it’s nothing to do with what I write. And it’s nothing to do with what I believe.

It’s tempting to bash Luntz for making it easier for Republican policy makers to exasperate the environmental crisis, but instead, I’d prefer to welcome Luntz to reality-based science. He has rejected the advice he gave others and he wants nothing to do with the administration’s policy.

Luntz is six years too late, but when it comes to the GOP and global warming, I’m afraid we need to take all the help we can get.

Well, I’m still not putting him on my holiday greeting list, but maybe it’s still not too late for him to reverse some of the damage he’s done.

  • You mean I won’t be protected from global warming in the Republicans’ gated communities? Then how about a little redemption before the earth turns up the heat?

  • grammar police warning: exacerbate instead of exasperate. Otherwise keep up the fine work.

  • Yesterday, in petitioning the Supreme Court not to take up the issue of whether the EPA must regulate auto emissions because of global warming, the Justice Department questioned whether the government could and should “embark on the extraordinarily complex and scientifically uncertain task of addressing the global issue of greenhouse gases” by regulating motor vehicles sold in the United States, as reported in the LA Times.

    Hey, there’s one way to look at it: they are consistent. Consistent morons who are consistently wrong.

  • I second that tom!

    The justice department position is basically, america is too weak and dumb to address such an complicated problem. The same government that put a man on the moon is now unable to do the simplest regulatary tasks.

  • No, it is too late for Frank Luntz. Fuck him. I hope he burns in hell for everything evil thing he’s ever done. Frankly, Steve, you’re being far too charitable to the evildoers today.

  • I think what we are witnessing is a little election strategery going on. Many evangelical leaders called on their consevative followers to care for the environment over the last year.

    This smacks of Rovian positioning to me. They are simply setting up their next round of candidates to be environmentally friendly posers in an attempt to make global warming and other problems non-issues.

    Of course, just like other conservative evangelical issues, the Republicans don’t really care. It’s just about votes; there are thirty million members in the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) which pledged in 2005 to take better care of the environment.

  • I’m really tired of Luntz’s focus-grouped, lowest common denominator type of political advice. It’s done a lot to drag down the poitical discourse in the past six years.

    But GC changes over time and Luntz is beginning to reflect that. Colbert hit the nail on the head at his WH correspondents dinner when he said Bush believes the same thing on Friday as he did on Monday, even if something changes on Wednesday.

    Doubtful made a good point. Repubs will probably start to position themselves as against global warming, it’s just that those damn Chinese and Indians cause so much of it and should the American taxpayer pay all the financial burden. Rovian politics: all positioning and no real action.

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