Luntz defends his dishonesty

April 25, 2007

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. Just as Americans needed to understand the seriousness of the threat, Luntz helped lead the way in making sure that didn’t happen. 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.

And that’s exactly what Republicans did. Luntz’s strategy memo became gospel in GOP circles and directly helped delay policy changes that needed to occur years ago.

As it turns out, Luntz has since distanced himself from the advice he used to give — he now believes global warming is real — but he continues to shun responsibility for the efficacy of his advice.

PBS’s Frontline chatted with Luntz about his “no consensus” strategy on climate change, and the fact that global-warming deniers continue to embrace Luntz’s old advice.

“Look, you want me to say it? It was a great memo. It was great language. I busted my ass for that memo. I have spent many sleepless nights going over focus group tapes, writing exercises, trying to figure out what language would work. And in the end, for that time, I think I found good language. I know that those who dislike my position or who resent the memo, they will acknowledge that it is good language. They could be just as effective, but they don’t listen….

“Words do matter, and that stuff is actually more significant, I think, than this memo. But obviously the memo bothered some people, because it keeps coming up and keeps coming up and keeps coming up.”

I think it keeps coming up because we’re looking for some kind of remorse here.

The truth is, it was a “great memo” in the same way tobacco companies are “great” at marketing to minors, or Karl Rove is “great” at misleading voters. The underlying act is still morally and ethically dubious. Luntz helped make a serious problem worse. He spent “sleepless nights” making sure he could help politicians and corporate polluters undermine our safety. This “bothered some people” because it was the wrong thing for Luntz to do.

Again, from Frontline:

PBS: [An] entire group of science skeptics grew up around that, who have in some ways moved the debate back to “scientists aren’t really sure,” when in fact scientists are sure.

Luntz: Again, my own beliefs have changed from when I was tasked with that project. … Back then HDTV did not exist; flat-screen TVs and plasmas did not exist; TiVo, my favorite invention of the 21st century, did not exist. Things change. Life changes. Conditions change. So it is unfair to take a document that was written primarily in ’98, ’97, ’98 and apply it to 2006.

PBS: Even though some people still are.

Luntz: That’s their responsibility. They have to defend that.

Luntz seems oddly detached from his own “successes.” He handed people a tool to do wrong, those people used the tool, and now Luntz wants to wash his hands of having created it in the first place.

The same thing happened a year ago during a BBC interview.

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.

Way to take responsibility for your work, Frank.

I can see him running a death camp in Germany, and being proud of how efficient his gas chamber designs were.

Unbelievable.

  • Flawed Memes designed to Protect Oil/Utilities don’t kill people. CO2 from those People Kill People.

  • Rhymes with … Punts.

    I think Frankie is a great example of “What’s Wrong With ReThuglicans.” He really doesn’t feel any responsibility for his acts. He was just doing his job. He does expect credit for doing his job (and loosing sleep over it, poor boy) and that is where his involvement ended.

  • If Imus had called Frank Luntz a ho, he’d still have his job ’cause he would have been telling the truth. For the right price, Luntz would come up with “great language” dissing anything his pimp of the moment wanted dissed. He’s a sleazy word ho spreading diseased “beliefs” and deserves no respect or attention.

  • So the GOP’s ship is sinking and Luntz is a rat. Big deal. As someone who’s debated creationists for decades, I know Luntz didn’t have to ponder for more than two seconds before borrowing from the standard creationist boilerplate on how there’s a scientific “controversy” about evolution. None of his schtick is new at all, it’s just applied to a different scientific subject. All you need is some vaguely credible “expert” on climate change for “fair and balanced” journamalists to quote and you’re in business.

  • I think Frank is under the impression that he can not only erase the past, but go back to kindergarten…he is working under the rule that sticks and stones can break people’s bones, but words…well they are just on pieces of paper…who cares if certain people are always going to question the validity of scientific proof, because it would be better at the time they were written if everyone believed a lie…

    Lo Fleming

  • Pretty heavy burden when you tally up the damage his clever little memo has, and will continue to cause.

    If it was an accident, fair enough. In his case, he knew exactly what he was doing, he knew he was muddying the waters, he knew he was creating a false impression to confuse people’s understanding, he knew it was for personal gain and nothing else — and yet he is still proud of it.

    Beggars belief.

    On Racerx’ point: too true, except he’d have been safer in that job.

  • In other words:

    “What do you want me to say? I was really good at what I did. Sure, maybe now it’s clear that I was a servant of greedy and venal men, and that I helped my evil masters delay actions that would have helped save everyone on the planet from decades or centuries of climatic upheaval (not to mention the extinction of untold numbers of species), but hey, that was my job and I was good at it.”

    “You have to admit I was good at it.”

    Go sit on some Arctic sea ice, Frank. Sit on it. While you can.

  • Luntz represents all that is horrible and grotesque within the human condition. His disposition and temperment doesn’t allow him to be a part of the human character. He is dishonestly divorced from all that is moral and ethical. He will have many more sleepless nights when he truly realizes his culpability in the fine mess his interests have allow to continue for far too long now. Luntz deserves whatever negativity he has brought upon himself. -Kevo

  • Frank Luntz: yet another whiny-ass titty-baby who doesn’t like being called a whore as much as he liked *being* a whore.

    Sleepless nights, Frank? Good luck ever getting the other kind, asshole.

  • “I think it keeps coming up because we’re looking for some kind of remorse here.”

    Modern conservatives are often misunderstood and their ideas poorly implemented, but they’re never wrong. They don’t apologize, don’t feel shame or remorse, are beyond questioning or accountability and never hesitant to remind you of it.

    It’s tempting to think that everyone has limits to their bad behavior, but as Luntz, DeLay, Gingrich, Cheney, Rove, et. al. have tried so hard to teach us, that’s just not reality anymore.

  • Go sit on some Arctic sea ice, Frank. Sit on it. While you can.

    Polar bears are having trouble finding food.

    Of course, feeding something like Frank Runtz to them constitutes cruelty to dumb animals and I don’t mean Frankenfurter.

  • I had the privilege 18 months ago – when I was still young enough to be in the “useable demographic” to get in invitation to one of his market research sessions here in Los Angeles, for which I was to get $100. Well, I didn’t really want his money, so when he got up and started talking, I started heckling him with his own words on this stuff. He tried to say that this session “wasn’t political” to which I told him he was “always political.” Two other people started in, and the rest of the audience started laughing at him because he was so bad at responding. It was like watching a deer in the headlights, I gotta tell you.

    In the end, he had to cancel the session because the group had been “poisoned,” and he still had to pay up when the crowd got “unruly” over the thought they’d driven to Westwood in rush hour and weren’t going to get paid. At that point, along with the rest, I did take his money, since I felt I had earned it.

    There’s no sport more fun than shooting Republicans in a barrel. Get a 16-guage shotgun and deerloads – it makes a bigger mess. (by that, I mean go prepared. I had a printout of his “biggest hits”)

  • Luntz is like a lot of the Republicans of this generation. He is clever enough to come up with really devious ways to accomplish a goal and succeed. The problem is what he accomplishes only destroys and never does anything positive for the world. Look at Abramoff, DeLay, Cheney, Ney, The Dukestir and the rest of the crew. Oh, they got away with their grand schemes for a while, but it was only destructive in the long run.

    For me, the best thing you can say about a person is that the world is better off because they lived in it. For these Republicans, I can’t say that at all.

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