{"id":3607,"date":"2005-02-24T10:46:38","date_gmt":"2005-02-24T15:46:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/3607.html"},"modified":"2005-02-24T10:46:38","modified_gmt":"2005-02-24T15:46:38","slug":"luntzs-twisted-911-advice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/luntzs-twisted-911-advice\/","title":{"rendered":"Luntz’s twisted 9\/11 advice"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s 160 pages, but Frank Luntz’s strategy report, obtained and posted online by Kos<\/a>, is one of the more important post-election documents available. Luntz, an \u00c3\u00bcber-pollster for Republicans and MSNBC, no doubt intended this to be available to a limited audience, which makes it all the more entertaining to read.<\/p>\n

Luntz’s playbook confirms all of our worst fears about how Republicans run successful campaigns — namely lie, obfuscate, and deny your way to victory. Luntz essentially lays out the best way to make this strategy work in the most amoral way possible.<\/p>\n

The Center for American Progress’ Think Progress blog is doing a lot of the heavy lifting here, going through the document<\/a> for some of the juiciest elements, but Luntz’s advice on exploiting 9\/11<\/a> stood out as uniquely painful.<\/p>\n

In his memo on how to manipulate American perception on the economy, right-wing spinmeister Frank Luntz advises conservatives to “resist the temptation’ to use facts and figures about the economy. (You know, all those pesky statistics about lower wages, unemployment, skyrocketing deficits, etc.) Instead, he advises, you can’t go wrong if you continuosly remind people about the terrorist attacks of 9\/11. “This is the context that explains and justifies why we have $500 billion deficits, why the stock market tanked, why unemployment climbed to 6%.” <\/p>\n

Oh, yes, he advises preying on the emotions tied to the terrorist attacks to distract Americans from the truth about the economy, writing, “Much of the public anger can be immediately pacified if they are reminded that we would not be in this situation today if 9\/11 had not happened.” It’s also an easy way to get President Bush off the hook: Luntz points out that convincing people that the struggling economy is a consequence of 9\/11 (as opposed to, say, Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthy) will convince people “it is unfair to blame the current political leadership” <\/p>\n

Finally, Luntz advises, 9\/11 is the perfect way to dodge responsibility for sinking the country in red ink. In a section headed “Without the context of 9-11, you will be blamed for the deficit,” he points out “supporters are inherently turned off to the idea of fiscal irresponsibility.” The best way to counter that fact? “The trick then is to contextualize the deficit inside of 9\/11.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It’s almost hard to believe how deeply cynical this is, but the words come directly from Luntz and go directly to his Republican clients. Never mind the facts — the deficit is driven by the enormous costs of excessive tax cuts for millionaires — Luntz implores GOP candidates to exploit tragedy, shun responsibility, and play on people’s fears, all the while painting a distorted picture of fiscal reality.<\/p>\n

The mind reels.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s 160 pages, but Frank Luntz’s strategy report, obtained and posted online by Kos, is one of the more important post-election documents available. Luntz, an \u00c3\u00bcber-pollster for Republicans and MSNBC, no doubt intended this to be available to a limited audience, which makes it all the more entertaining to read. Luntz’s playbook confirms all of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3607","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3607","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3607"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3607\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3607"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3607"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3607"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}