'I want you to see what a s***show America is': Frank Luntz warns the UK [View all]

[Mr. Sparkle]

Last edited Fri Jan 28, 2022, 08:42 AM - Edit history (2)

But during his more recent sojourn there, he said he had a chance to reflect on the trends that have shaped US politics over the last several years and compare them to those on the other side of the “special relationship”. He told his guests the clip they were about to see demonstrated the difference between the two countries right now in a way that did not reflect well on his homeland. “I want to show you what a s***show America is,” he said. What followed had more in common with an old episode of The Jerry Springer Show than the focus groups for which Luntz has become known over the years. Instead of a calm, thoughtful moderated discussion, the participants screamed at each other.

One elderly man ranted about how “God chooses the colour of our skin,” while another droned on about how “economic opportunity for Blacks just has increased dramatically” because “they” were “all over Hollywood” and in “every other commercial”. The clip ended before things degenerated even further, at which point Luntz explained why he’d wanted to put that shocking material on display. “This is what I hear. I don't hear this in the UK … I don’t want to hear this,” he said. Luntz said he had brought that horrific video clip with him to meetings with “a number of shadow Labour” leaders, as well as with prominent Conservatives and Liberal Democrats. “This is my warning to you,” he explained. “This is s***, this is a disaster, and it will come if you let it happen”.

Many Democrats trace the “disaster” Luntz spoke of back to 1994, when Republicans used language and talking points he had crafted for them to convince US voters to give them control of the House of Representatives for the first time in decades. Four years before that, the then-leader of the House GOP, Newt Gingrich had enlisted Luntz to develop talking points for his political action committee, Gopac. A memorandum he allegedly wrote for Gopac called Language: A Key Mechanism of Control lays out “contrasting words” for Republicans to use when talking about Democrats. But in a 2019 interview with Mother Jones, he denied having anything to do with the document, calling it “as cynical and evil as anything that’s been written in American politics and “the most destructive political memo written in modern politics” because “all it did” was “teach hate and division”. The result, he said, was that America’s democracy had “seized up”.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/frank-luntz-polls-us-boris-johnson-b2002106.html