Frank Luntz is First-Class -- at Being an Ass

In case you don't know him (and why would anyone want to, really?), Luntz is a Republican strategist cut from the same fabric as Lee Atwater and Karl "Turdblossom" Rove. Luntz is a crafter of Republican talking points that has focused their attention on just the right things to generate enough public opposition to Democratic legislation to get it derailed in Congress. His latest lie: stop calling Obama's financial reform bill "reform." "It's not 'reform.' This is not a reform bill. It is the 'Stop the Big Bank Bailout bill," states Luntz's memo to Republicans. So, by linking the financial reform bill to a Big Bank Bailout, he contends, Republicans can kill the bill. As Chait observes, this is like that Magritte painting entitled "This is not a pipe."


See, the evil in this is that Republicans really want banks to be left alone the same way they were over the past eight years. And we all know how that went. Of course, a few crackpot economists will take money to say what the Republicans want them to say, and we always have the sage wisdom of Bill Kristol and Glenn Beck, who will drag out his chalkboard and illustrate just why the next logical step after Obama's financial reform bill is forced re-education camps and Maoist uniforms.


So because the Republicans find themselves having to back an unpopular position, they are instructed to pretend that the position is just the opposite. So the Republicans, who are in the position of trying to defend their position that banks need to be allowed to grow too big too fail and to drag our economy back into the mud, instead lambaste any attempt to regulate their biggest contributors as a big government bailout ... of their biggest contributors!


As Chait wryly observes, "I wonder why Democrats never thought of this approach. Instead of opposing the Bush tax cuts, why not crusade against the 'Bush tax hike'? Rather than oppose Samuel Alito's Supreme Court nomination, why not just insist you oppose the nomination of Charles Manson? Everybody hates Charles Manson."

Plus, Luntz is one homely doughboy, ain't he?