When it comes to finding ways to make policies that hurt everyday people sound downright appealing, the Republican Party’s go-to guy is pollster Frank Luntz.
Luntz has spent decades using polling research to find the most appealing ways to package right-wing policies in language that makes them sound wholesome and all-American. Most recently, he’s turned his attentions to health care reform, penning a widely-circulated 28-page memo (PDF) with instructions for Republicans on how to kill the reform effort — not by opposing it outright, but by claiming to support a health reform program, just not any program that actually gets put before Congress. The memo also suggests scare words for conservatives to use — such as referring to any proposed reforms as a “government takeover” of health care — that are designed to poison public opinion against reform.
On Wednesday, Senator Jeff Merkley (D-OR), speaking on the Senate floor, called out some of his Republican colleagues for parroting Luntz’s dishonest talking points:
Senator Merkley was too polite to call out any Republicans by name. But I’m not nearly that polite, so let me introduce you to a particularly egregious example of a Republican following Luntz’s strategy like a lemming: Senator Tom Coburn, Republican of Oklahoma.
This past Tuesday, June 9, Senator Coburn rose on the Senate floor to address that body on the subject of health care reform. Here’s how he described the shape of the crisis:
If you cannot get treatment when you need it, there is a crisis. If you are denied the ability to choose the doctor or hospital that is best for you, that is a crisis for you. If you cannot afford the coverage you need for you and your family, then you have a crisis.
We need to stop looking at it from a global perspective and restore the humanity to health care. We need to focus more on people and less on the system.
(Check it yourself — here’s a link to page S6357 of the Congressional Record, which contains his remarks.)
So why is that remarkable? Because Coburn’s words were lifted almost exactly word for word from Luntz’s how-to-kill-health-care-reform memo. Turn to page 4 of that memo and, inside a box labeled “WORDS THAT WORK,” you’ll find the following:
If you can’t get the treatment you need, when you need it, there is a crisis.
If you are denied the ability to choose the doctor or hospital that’s best for you, then it is a crisis.
If you can’t afford the coverage you need for you and your family, then you have a crisis.
We need to stop looking at it from a global perspective and restore the humanity to healthcare. We need to focus more on people and less on the system.
… followed by Luntz’s blunt explanation of why using these words will help push the debate in the direction of killing health care reform:
This is the single best approach to the crisis language because it individualizes and personalizes healthcare - and shows empathy for anyone and everyone struggling right now. This plays into more favorable Republican territory by protecting individual care while downplays the need for a comprehensive national healthcare plan.
(Here’s a screenshot of the telltale “WORDS THAT WORK” box.)
What’s striking about this is that Coburn, addressing the Senate, didn’t make even the slightest effort to inform his colleagues that the ideas he were expressing — heck, the very words he was using — were not his own. He threw them out there on the Senate floor as if they were the result of his own independent thinking. But given that his words are almost exactly the same as the words found in Luntz’s memo, they seem less like “independent thinking” and a lot more like “copy and paste.”
So if you were wondering which Republican Members of Congress had decided to follow Frank Luntz like lemmings as he marches off to prevent Americans from getting quality, affordable health care, you now know the name of one such lemming: Senator Tom Coburn.
Comments (4)
Comments posted to CtW Connect are the sole property of the individual posting them, and do not necessarily reflect the viewpoints of Change to Win, its affiliated unions, or its leadership.
There is a problem with assuming that Sen. Coburn is an unthinking GOP lemming: he is a practicing M.D.; and someone whose independence from the GOP leadership is legendary.
Posted by richard andrews on June 13, 2009 at 2:47 PM
Posted on June 13, 2009 at 2:47 PM
As much as I wish Coburn was from Arkansas, he's from Oklahoma, where I live.
As to richard andrews' comment, his independence from GOP leadership is strictly confined to fiscal policy. He is not above using GOP talking points when it suits his purpose.
Posted by Richard Blanc on June 14, 2009 at 5:06 PM
Posted on June 14, 2009 at 5:06 PM
Thanks for catching my typo, Richard -- it's fixed now!
Posted by Jason Lefkowitz on June 14, 2009 at 7:11 PM
Posted on June 14, 2009 at 7:11 PM
Why doesn't the entire labor movement meet with President Obama and all the key members of the democratic leadership at the White House and lay it all on the table in no uncertain terms. Make it clear that to have a true national health system a public option must be included to compete with the private sector in order to lower costs. If all Congress is going to do is pass some sort of half hearted watered down version of a new health bill then it's a complete waste of time and we'll end up only making matters worse not better for the american people. I keep hearing about not having the votes in the Senate??? I think it's time for the President to start finding out why some in the Senate aren't supporting his plan. It's time to start cranking up the heat in the Senate!
Posted by Workin' Man on June 15, 2009 at 3:19 AM
Posted on June 15, 2009 at 3:19 AM