More advice from the Luntz paper:
– Define fairness as “equality of opportunity”.
– Start and end with accountability. It matters most.
– It is my belief that if you get the tone correct, the right words will surely follow.
– The flag is in many ways an American Rorschach test – the inkblot upon which Americans project their ideals of America.
– “My opponents seems to appreciate HOLLYWOOD VALUES. I guess I’m more old fashioned. I appreciate American values”
– Don´t talk about Tax-Cuts, talk about Tax-Hikes (the danger of tax hikes.
and on and on and on.
If you want to learn the bits that work for the GOP, and if you want to counter them, take the time to read this stuff.

Posted by: b | Feb 23 2005 17:03 utc | 3

What our own talking heads need to do, in the short run, is learn the 14 phrases, and then re-frame them every time they’re used. As in:
“When — says ‘Washington,’ what s/he really means is GOP special interest groups.”
“When — says ‘Free Market Economy,’ what s/he really means is letting mega-corporations exploit the poor.”
“Lawsuit Abuse Reform” = zero corporate accountability
“Illegal Aliens” = squashing the American dream
“Personal Injury Lawyer” = corporate accountability lawyer
and so on.
Every time someone on their side tries to use one of these phrases, we should be ready to re-frame it–cut the speakers off in mid-sentence and “interpret” them. We can’t stop them from saying this stuff, but we can disrupt the propagandizing process before their memes take root in people’s minds. We need to do more than that, of course, but that’s one step we can take.
P.S. Hi, Jerome. 🙂

Posted by: Leslie in CA | Feb 23 2005 17:43 utc | 5

@mats
Plenty of us are being killed, and have been for the past 40 years, quietly, discreetly. And I am extremely angry about it too.

Posted by: rapt | Feb 23 2005 17:58 utc | 7

Leslie – Hi! Good to see you around here. Stick around!

Posted by: Jérôme | Feb 23 2005 18:13 utc | 9

And Berhard:
Great topic. This is the area where elections and hearts and minds are won and lost.
The Dems in America have got to start playing the same game–with a vengeance.

Posted by: Groucho | Feb 23 2005 19:22 utc | 11

Another nice titbid from the Luntz paper:

“Cutting wasteful Washington spending” had always had greater emonital appeal than “balancing the budget.” This is still true today. Americans still believe the primary cause of the deficit is wasteful Washington spending, not the tax cuts. So tell them: “Americans arn´t taxed too little. Washington spends too much.”

(original emphasis)
Or in my words:
“Hey folks – imagine – these idiots still believe this shit that the tax cuts make no budget problem. Keep on telling them the spending is the problem (but don´t tell them that we do the spending, and when we make the tax cuts for the rich permanent we will say we are against tax-increases).”

Posted by: b | Feb 23 2005 19:34 utc | 13

b real
it is interesting – in a recent interview with the vice president of cuba on counterpunch – he was extremey dismissive of the industrial & financial power of u s imperialism – he thinks as i do that it is dying – but what he dis say was theat the means of communication are an apparatus that the empire has perfected & is in essence powerful inferred from what he sd capable of reproducing power & you are right to cite means about our communication – for me the three c’s – communication -context-community – they can be defeated

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Feb 23 2005 19:52 utc | 15

Here is a quote i think comments Mr. Luntz’s strong words of advice to all those haughty fellows on the right.

A man is supple and weak when living, but hard and stiff when dead. Grass and trees are pliant and fragile when living, but dried and shrivelled when dead. Thus the hard and the strong are the comrades of death; the supple and the weak are the comrades of life.
Therefore a weapon that is strong will not vanquish;
A tree that is strong will suffer the axe.
The strong and big takes the lower position,
The supple and weak takes the higher position.

(Tao The Ching, folio 76)

Mr. Luntz engages in one great tour de force of corrupting the language of american politics (even more) in an effort to keep his people in power. What makes this work so interesting is not so much the anecdotal details of the mastery of destructive rhethorics displayed, but that it shows how deep the divide is in american society between those in power and the rest.
For the republicans to engage into this kind of thing in order to stay in power is testimony to how oblivious they are to the interests and needs of the country and people they purport to represent.

Posted by: name | Feb 23 2005 21:58 utc | 17

Alistair “Fucking” Campbell is to blame for giving Bliar the language to stay alive.
Luntz is just plagiarizing.

Posted by: Cloned Poster | Feb 23 2005 23:00 utc | 19

At 5:14 PM, if you read my comment, I lament the capture of the dems by the Democratic Leadership Council and complain how the economic agenda that was the dems has been toossed to the side, Ask anyone on this site, I advocate the re-distributtion of wealth. I am a class warrior.
I don’t care what Atrios and Kos say. Atrios could be a dlc lackey, I don’t care. Until someone, in the late 1800s sence, without the racist undertones, appeals to the economic interest of the average man in a way that is not divide and conquer like the rethugs (they only skewer issues to confuse subjects) we, the US, will be a wholely owned subsidiary of corporate interest. Its time to break the yoke of slavery to the Bushie campaign donors.
It’s time to frame the issues for the everyman.

Posted by: jdp | Feb 24 2005 1:23 utc | 21

Leslie
I know. I do what I can. I’ve been working on my parents since I was 8. Now, my Dad doesn’t say “spic” and no longer believes the banks are controlled by “jews.” But the fact that my parents’ little american middle class dream was shredded by healthcare costs, does not register in their minds the experience of oppression. All they are certain about is poverty is personal failure. They both just shake their heads and blame themselves. Their self-hatred is depthless. They’re “good people.”

Posted by: slothrop | Feb 24 2005 1:57 utc | 23

And continuing your line of thought DnA:
At some point we might even have to pass the sharp knife across their throats, metaphorically speaking, of course.

Posted by: Groucho | Feb 24 2005 3:34 utc | 25

Just back from a meeting with some good friends where we discussed the latest doubleplus good words.
The substance of our conversation was that the important thing was to “call bullshit” when someone started spouting those words. The question was raised about whether or not we might be mistaken for inconsequential PC-mongerers. We agreed that PC is when you try to identify yourself and your image by words. Calling bullshit is different because it always addresses how the words get the issue wrong (not how the words are themselves somehow wrong). I suspect we will have to be good about calling BS with a sense of humor, just to crack open those clamshell minds a bit when the laughter comes out. Still, my friends and I are resolved to provide each other oases of solidarity against the hours of social rending we experience every day. So we’re ready to do our insignificant bits.
I expect a few of them will be visiting here. Solidarnosc.

Posted by: Citizen | Feb 24 2005 6:23 utc | 27

@jdp and DeAnander
I am a class warrior
Right on jdp! If people don’t think we have a
caste system in this country it is because of “trained incapacity”. As Thorstein Veblen pointS out, authority figures train their members or practitioners to see certain aspects of a problem, but in so doing those practitioners become trained to not see other aspects of a problem. While many are just now feeling the effects of being down-wardly mobile. The elite justify it with a “blameless cupidity” also a Veblenism.
De: You know I always find it interesting, in disussions with lefty/pwog activists of various stripes, that when debate is kindled or action planned someone always says, “But we have to be nice.” one way to counter act that what Anthropologist Laura Nader calls “HARMONY COERCED” “Coercive harmony has often accompanied large-scale social movements, including Western colonialism, Christian missionary work, and globalization”(Nader Chronicle of Higher Education, 7/13/2001, Vol. 47 Issue 44, pB13, 1p.
When I looked at legal reform in the United States, I also found harmony being used as a control, this time by the powerful. In the 1970’s, something called alternative dispute resolution was born. It was a reform movement in response to the new cases (proponents of the movement called them “garbage cases”) that were entering the courts after the social turmoil of the 1960’s — cases about civil rights, environmental and consumer rights, Native American and gender issues, and so forth. The movement favored compromise over adversarial procedures, harmony over social justice”(Nader Chronicle of Higher Education, 7/13/2001, Vol. 47 Issue 44, pB13, 1p. She goes on to say what is happening right now is “corporate fundamentalism” or “corporate colonialism” “Corporate secular fundamentalism shares some of the traits of religious fundamentalism: conviction of righteousness, certainty of the truth, intolerance of difference, evangelising zeal and a paranoid mindset.”

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Feb 24 2005 6:59 utc | 29

b – the linguistics of energy are simple – always talk about supply, never about demand. Always look for ways to produce more (to satisfy the relentless demand), never for ways to adapt demand (to the eventually shrinking supply)

Posted by: Jérôme | Feb 24 2005 12:14 utc | 31

Uncle $cam–and the current corporate manifestation of that is the forced arbitration language included in most boilerplate consumer contracts from large companies.
jdp, DeAnander, Citizen: Absolutely. We must call bullshit (part of what I meant by my earlier posts), and we must actually, not just rhetorically, take up the cause of social and economic justice.

Posted by: Leslie in CA | Feb 24 2005 17:49 utc | 33