The Agony of Frank Luntz

[xchrom]

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/01/the-agony-of-frank-luntz/282766/



Frank Luntz does not want the buffet. We are on the top floor of the Capitol Hill Club, the members-only Republican hangout a block from the Capitol, where a meaty smell is emanating from steam trays. Today's main course is ham, and Luntz shakes his head.

There's also fish, the host offers—mahi mahi. No. "I'm 0 for 2," Luntz says mournfully.

"Roast chicken," the host says, but it's too late; he's lost him. "Boring," Luntz says, as we head for the elevator to the full-service dining room in the basement.

America's best-known public-opinion guru hasn't suddenly gone vegan. Luntz—the tubby, rumpled guy who runs the focus groups on Fox News after presidential debates, the political consultant and TV fixture whose word has been law in Republican circles since he helped write the 1994 Contract With America—has always been a hard man to please. But something is different now, he tells me. Something is wrong. Something in his psyche has broken, and he does not know if he can recover.

[NRaleighLiberal]

1. fascinating paragraph here -

"Luntz's populism has turned on itself and become its opposite: fear and loathing of the masses. "I am grateful that Occupy Wall Street turned out to be a bunch of crazy, disgusting, rude, horrible people, because they were onto something," he says. "Limbaugh made fun of me when I said that Occupy Wall Street scares me. Because he didn't hear what I hear. He doesn't see what I see." The people are angry. They want more, not because we have not given them enough but because we have given them too much. "

These people just can't even grapple with the fact that they are wrapped in a bubble of greed and distortion, and may be wrong. Horrifying. That last sentence - amazing. This man has not a shred of self-awareness or humility.

[Oilwellian]

6. And the one right before it

"The politicians have failed; now it's up to the business community to stand up and be heard," he tells me. "I want the business community to step up." Having once thought elites needed to listen to regular people, he now wants the people to learn from their moneyed betters.

Does he not realize it is our moneyed betters who control our government, and are responsible for the mess we're in?

[ronnie624]

12. "we have given them"

As if public revenue belongs exclusively to the elite, to do with as they please.

[Dawson Leery]

15. The same Luntz who defends corporate welfare

says the masses have too much. This double standard is what has angered the populace. He has admitted such.

[gaspee]

2. I don't think it's ever occurred to him

That his main problem is that his worldview is just plain wrong and the wrongness of it, as opposed to the pretty words he has wrapped it in to sell it, is becoming apparent to more and more people. Not enough, yet, but too many for him to "win" anymore.

[Lex]

3. Bingo! He is coming to realize

he is wrong and he's trying to blame "the people" and Obama, but he's just in denial that it's his worldview is wrong.

[Wounded Bear]

27. The only people who call Pres Obama "divisive"...

are those whose hatred for him is pre-loaded. What they're really saying is that we're all stupid for electing him and we should just admit it and let them take over.

[JHB]

28. A guy who counts Newt Gingrich as a political mentor has no place...

...accusing anyone else of being "divisive", nor of lamenting how divided the country is. It's what you've spent your whole career working on.

Start reading some of the things Lee Atwater said once he knew his days were numbered, Frank.

[Lex]

31. I was thinking of Lee Atwater too.

He caused so much divisiveness and later regretted it but it was too late.

[NRaleighLiberal]

7. Bingo.

[CatWoman]

20. or it could be his God awful hairpiece

if that's any indication of his "judgement"

[TlalocW]

4. Gee, I just can't feel sorry for him

He's been one of the main architects in politics that has brought us to the level of vitriol he now bemoans. He's been at it for 20 years, and he's trying to blame Obama who's only starting his sixth year of his presidency, who the republicans - with their ranks still filled with racists, both subtle and loud and filled with confidence from Luntz's one-sided public opinion gathering - pledged from the beginning never to work with him on anything.

TlalocW

[meow2u3]

5. I know what's wrong with him--we wised up

We've cracked the conservative propaganda code and he can't stand it anymore.

[sendero]

8. Nice..

.... I agree with this and the other comments - this guy is suffering a terminal case of cognitive dissonance. Here's some advice for Frankie:

1) lose some weight
2) find a woman, or man if it suits you, there's nothing wrong with that
3) look at the statistics of income distribution in this country over the last 3 decades and tell me with a straight face that the government is giving too much away

4) get real douchebag

[pa28]

9. He's usually right about how people think and what their motivations are.

I just don't see how he could have gotten Occupy so fundamentally wrong. I don't want or need anything - he's just somehow missed that occupy is not about taking other people's money. It's about expressing anger that banks and corporations have shut ordinary people out of the political process and the economy.

He sees it as a movement of dirty, potentially dangerous moochers who want to steal all his money and stab him with a pitchfork. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

[Berlum]

10. Luntz is a near-perfect embodiment of Scientific Materialist* degeneration

*Dude has a wicked bad case of RepubliBrain. You can bet your bippy he would back the Wrongheaded Warriors Against Woo who are running amuck on the Intertubes.

[UTUSN]

11. R#6 & K for, HE of all people wants a melting pot?!1 And he owns having majorly polarized

the politics but he blames OBAMA. Yaaas, that's the ticket!1 What's he going to do in Las Vegas, again?!1

[PowerToThePeople]

13. His big ol fat head

he is one disgustingly ugly puke. His insides certainly have shown through.

Just let them continue down their path. The destruction it leads to is their own.

[progressoid]

14. I'm not a violent person

but if I met him on a pier on a cold lake...hmmm....

[HughBeaumont]

16. I literally don't know who is more delusional . .. Frank Luntz or Thomas Friedman.

Both are in love with their own legends and live in some cosmic corporate world filled with absolutes, hilarious theories and Randian heroics.

That world sure ain't ours, and that's something they still do not (and from the looks of it, never will) get.

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Fractal_wrongness

[PDittie]

17. He's bi-polar

and that was a severe depressive episode he suffered at the end of 2012.

I ain't no doctor, but I wouldn't be surprised if we read about him suffering a Breitbart, and very soon.

[UTUSN]

18. There can't be too much agony for LUNTZ. My favorite excerpts of the link:

After he blames OBAMA of all people for the polarization of the politics and recites the wingnut philosophy (no safety net, all capitalism), he seems oblivious:

*******UNQUOTE*******

.... A few weeks after our lunch, Luntz tells me he's made a move. He has changed his principal residence from Northern Virginia to a condo overlooking the Las Vegas Strip, and he's contemplating a sale of his company, Luntz Global LLC, the details of which he is not at liberty to discuss. Las Vegas, he says, represents "my chance to be intellectually challenged again" by a place that is "the closest thing to a melting pot America has to offer." As fresh starts go, it's not much, but Luntz hopes it will bring some new clarity.

The crisis began, he says, after last year's presidential election, when Luntz became profoundly depressed. For more than a month, he tried to stay occupied, but nothing could keep his attention. Finally, six weeks after the election, during a meeting of his consulting company in Las Vegas, he fell apart. Leaving his employees behind, he flew back to his mansion
in Los Angeles, where he stayed for three weeks, barely going outside or talking to anyone.

"I just gave up," Luntz says. ....

********UNQUOTE*********

[Lex]

19. "Luntz would also like to break into Hollywood as a consultant, but he can't get his calls returned"

"If he could, Luntz would like to have a consulting role on The Newsroom, Aaron Sorkin's HBO drama. "I know I'm not supposed to like it, but I love it," he says."

Oh I see, he wants to go Hollywood. Sheesh.

[CatWoman]

21. all is not lost

as long as Hollywood is looking for more crappy Reality Show ideas

[Boomerproud]

22. Don't you just want to take his pudgy face in your hand and ...

squeeze the living daylights out of it?

[kentuck]

23. This phrase caught my eye:

"The people are angry. They want more, not because we have not given them enough but because we have given them too much."
===========

He was referring to Occupy Wall Street.

[DemocraticWing]

24. Some of those specific ideas sound familiar.

The article compared it to what you'd hear on Morning Joe, and I kind of agree with it. Bland "centrist" ideas that always fundamentally assume that America must be a capitalist, militaristic society.

[Douglas Carpenter]

25. knr for a very uplifting article

[xxqqqzme]

26. Good! He has

caused enough agony in others for way too long.

What is that horrid thing on his head? Doesn't he make enough money to get a good piece.

[1StrongBlackMan]

29. I just scanned the article ...

but it would seem that Luntz's agony is in the realization that he bought into his own bullsh!t.

[Gothmog]

30. Karma can be nasty

Lutz is learning that there are limits to huis ability to sell policies that actually hurt voters

[WillyT]

32. K & R !!!