Beware the Frame: GOP Wastes No Time in Embracing Frank Luntz’s Health Care Rhetoric
MIKE ALLEN, Politico: Dr. Frank Luntz, a top Republican consultant on the language of politics, is warning the GOP that the American people want health-care reform and that lawmakers need to try to avoid directly opposing President Barack Obama.
“You simply MUST be vocally and passionately on the side of REFORM,” Luntz advises in a confidential 26-page report obtained from Capitol Hill Republicans. “The status quo is no longer acceptable. If the dynamic becomes ‘President Obama is on the side of reform and Republicans are against it,’ then the battle is lost and every word in this document is useless.
“Republicans must be for the right kind of reform that protects the quality of healthcare for all Americans. And you must establish your support of reform early in your presentation.”
Instead, Luntz says Republicans should warn against a “Washington takeover” of health care, and insist that patients would have to “stand in line” with “Washington bureaucrats in charge of healthcare.”
Luntz, the author of the bestselling book Words That Work: It’s Not What You Say, It’s What People Hear, has been involved in creating much of the language Republican lawmakers used from 1994 through 2004, but was tossed out by the House leadership in 2005. One of his coups was popularizing the phrase “death tax” for “inheritance tax.”
