Dr. Frank Luntz: Evil Genius Preventing the Cure for Cancer

Tim Cavanaugh | June 19, 2009

Sen. Jeff Merkley has met the enemy of health and it is Frank Luntz. Via Huffington Post comes this linguistics lesson, in which the Beaver State's junior senator inveighs against loaded health-care debate language from the pollster and spin expert, whose Luntz, Maslansky Strategic Research official bio notes that he once "spoke for 24 straight hours as part of the 'Oxford Union Society Guinness World Book of Records' debate.

Merkley quotes some 24-karat Luntz, including a passage about the need to "humanize" overseas health-care-denial stories and the transmission of the term "government takeover" into the previously unstained halls of the World's Greatest Deliberative Body and Topless Car Wash. "With working Americans in every one of our fifty states going bankrupt from health care expenses" Merkley's rhetoric-free denunciation from the Senate floor concludes, it is irresponsible to use a "road map of rhetoric that comes from polling." Luntz's distortions of the debate's vocabulary, Merkley says, has "bearance" on the issue. Here's the D&P:

One of the few things I don't miss about being in the MSM cocoon is the task of treating low-protein verbal confections like "permanent supportive care" and "real comprehensive immigration reform" as if they have bearance upon human life on planet Earth. I also suspect Luntz congratulates himself a wee mite more than strictly necessary for his clever phrasings.

But the real reason to be glad about high-profile deconstructions like Merkley's is that Health Care Reform Part 2 will look worse the more its related texts are unpacked. Back when I was merely middle-aged and the Golden State was considering a mandated-insurance statewide health care reform proposal, I had fun trying to get Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to use the word "coercion" in describing how he was going to get hundreds of thousands of Californians who didn't want to buy insurance to buy insurance. His response -- that he was seeking to change the "mentality of people" in order to make Californians more closely resemble the Austrians he once bragged about fleeing -- was instructive. Schwarzenegger's health care overhaul failed specifically because its breezy assumptions couldn't survive the light of day. And that was in the land of the nuts and the fruits. Imagine how much bogus language remains to be unpacked as the realities of multi-trillion-dollar state-run programs and death's inescapable victory reveal themselves through the summer.

Comments

Elemenope|6.19.09 @ 6:21PM|#

It doesn't help at all the Frank Luntz is actually an incarnation of Satan.

NLE|6.19.09 @ 8:22PM|#

When this place is overrun by Republicans, I'm gonna laugh.

|6.19.09 @ 10:15PM|#

Merkly's doing some clever wording of his own here. He says that Lutz' document is about "how to kill health care". Lutz isn't opposed to health care, he's opposed to government interference in health care.

-jcr

|6.20.09 @ 8:40AM|#

How about even lower-protein verbal confections like hope and change? Yes we can be fooled by jargon, and the consequences can be pretty nasty.

K T Cat|6.20.09 @ 11:42AM|#

If we all agreed not to force our children to pay for what we consume, the "health care reform" debate would be over instantly.

Fluffy|6.20.09 @ 4:26PM|#

Frank Luntz is in fact a douchebag and con man, but that doesn't mean this Senator isn't an a-hole too. So I guess it's a-hole vs. douchebag - who will win?

|6.21.09 @ 12:58PM|#

I think Schwarzenegger should uphold the rule of law and govern by the rules set forth by the United States Constitution, as he swore he would with his oath of office.

Back in the sixties the government came into the schools and brainwashed us with the idea we needed to control the population because it was rising so fast. They said the roads would become crowded and we would run out of things like water.

They unleashed abortions, birth control pills, and other forms of Family Planning.

To allow the country to be over run with the criminals in businesses illegal labor while the criminals in the government aid and abet the invasion is a travesty against mankind.

They have seen to it our children were killed to control the population at the same time allowing the world to export their population problems here.

What about our sacrifices, many made against our will?

P.S. We still haven't recovered from the last time the criminals in business were allowed to bring in their slaves.

|6.21.09 @ 12:59PM|#

Did you ever wonder where the money for things like the subversion of the world's immigration laws may come from?

It seems to me as long as we allow people to print up fiat money there will be no place in the world where freedom can flourish.

If the Globalist oppose your efforts, paid for with real hard earned money, all they have to do is fire up the presses and shovel the money to any group that will oppose you.

Not only that but it seems they do it in such a way that the money to achieve THEIR goals is borrowed from them. Then we pay interest to a group outside of our country, like the Federal Reserve, on the creation and borrowing of OUR OWN fiat money.

IN ESSENCE THEY BEAT US WITH OUR OWN STICK!