Blame It On Steinski

Politics

A short interview with Republican spin doctor #1

A short interview with Republican spin doctor #1Meet Frank Luntz, the man who puts the twisted words in the mouths of the Republican Party (when their feet aren’t in there).

Excerpted from the NY Times:

Your new 28-page memo, “The Language of Health Care,” was sent to Republicans in Congress and recommends that they speak about health care reform in ominous phrases. For instance, you suggest that they refer to “a Washington takeover.”

“Takeover” is a word that grabs attention.

Is it a correct description of the president’s plans for reform?

We don’t know what he is proposing. We want to avoid “a Washington takeover.”

But that’s not at issue. What the Democrats want is for everyone to be able to choose between their old, private health-insurance plan and an all-new, public health-insurance option.

I’m not a policy person. I’m a language person.

See, if you’re a “word person”, not a “policy person,” than you don’t have any responsibility for twisting the information. Sort of like being “just an interrogator,” not a “policy person.”

Today’s object lesson in spin and the Supreme Court (NY Times):

WASHINGTON – There was a word missing from the glowing introduction President Obama gave for Judge Sonia Sotomayor when he named her as his Supreme Court pick earlier this week: empathy.

Empathy, of course, was all the rage in Washington just a few short weeks ago, when Justice David H. Souter announced his retirement and Mr. Obama, in a surprise appearance in the White House briefing room, set forth his criteria for a replacement by declaring that he viewed “that quality of empathy, of understanding and identifying with people’s hopes and struggles, as an essential ingredient.”

Empathy had a nice ring to it, evoking images of compassion, kindness, wisdom, depth. The word stuck. Empathy was in.

But now that conservatives have hijacked empathy and turned it into an epithet – “a code word for an activist judge,” as Senator Orrin Hatch, the Utah Republican, said recently on ABC – Mr. Obama seems to have deftly dropped it from his lexicon. Don’t look for him to use it again.

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