Frank Luntz is Back with Doublespeak About Health Care Reform
Senator Merkin from Oregon wrote a piece in the Huffington Post yesterday that deserves your attention. You have to be concerned enough to remember when Frank Luntz, noted Republican pollster, drove all honest people crazy by turning English into Doublespeak and twisting words so they didn’t mean what we thought they did.
Sen. Merkin says he’s back:
” I was shocked when I read a memo from Republican strategist Dr. Frank Luntz laying out plans to dismantle any effort to give all Americans access to quality health care. Dr. Luntz, the man who developed language designed to promote preemptive war in Iraq and distract from the severity of global warming, is at it again — this time with a messaging strategy designed to sink our historic opportunity for health care reform.”
According to Merkin, Luntz is out to kill health care reform even though he knows Republicans won’t get what they want, either. This is the original zero sum game.
“Dr. Luntz lays out multiple ways that opponents of health care reform can trick and manipulate the American public. One strategy that stood out to me is to call efforts to reform our broken health care system a “bailout for the insurance industry.” This statement is developed to serve the same interests who stopped at nothing to derail health care reform in the 90’s, who blocked health care coverage for low-income children, and whose top Medicare priority for 15 years has been transferring money from seniors and taxpayers to the insurance industry.”
Even the insurance industry is now engaged in constructive negotiations about how to repair the health care system…however, Dr. Luntz’s new game plan to stop change is being embraced by leaders in the Republican Party. In a briefing where Dr. Luntz presented his strategy to Republican House members, Rep. Mike Pence from Indiana, the chairman of the House Republican Conference, made it official by saying, “Frank is back.”
The bad thing about all this manipulation of languages is that when voters get confused and can’t really follow the issue, they vote no.
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