The Republican Playbook (Aaron Swartz: The Weblog)

When commenters suggested it was unfair to compare Republicans to astrologists, I thought I might have to write a post with some basic facts about the election: only 6% of Bush voters decided based on “agendas/ideas/platforms/goals” (13% for Kerry voters), those that did were mistaken on many of the key facts they used to decide (e.g. thinking we found WMDs or that al-Qaeda and Saddam worked together), that even then the candidate planned to do the opposite of what they thought he would. Thankfully, this task has since become unnecessary. First, because it’s already been quite ably done in this article on the 2004 elections and second, because the Republicans have conceded the point.

Frank Luntz is a chief Reppublican strategist. His company, the Luntz Research Corporation, advises major companies and top Republican politicians on how to talk. Luntz’s methods — which he has been ahppy to describe in numerous interviews — are simple: take a topic, think up a number of ways to lie about it, record someone saying them, play the recording for an audience, and ask the audience which lie was most convincing. (Luntz then, of course, tells the person hiring him to use that convincing lie.)

Every so often, Luntz packages up the combined results of all this “research” into a strategy book which is then distributed to all the Republican operatives so that they can use the most effective terminology. Well, this year, we managed to get a copy of the briefing book. The liberal weblog Daily Kos has posted a scan of the book [8MB ZIP of two PDFs] and by reading it we can see precisely how the Republicans won.

Luntz begins (literally—this is the very first line) with a question most Democrats must be asking themselves:

So how does a President with a national job approval rating hovering at 50%, an economy that lost more than a million jobs over his four years in office, a war that has cost more than a thousand American lives and counting, $50 a barrel for oil, and a national mood that is downright sour still secure more than enough votes to win re-election?

The answer, Luntz explains, is simple: fear and lies. Now Luntz isn’t completely stupid, he calls these credibility and hope, but it’s clear from the definitions what he really means. (In the same way, Luntz says his focus groups are about learning how to understand Americans, not lie to them, but it’s clear from the videotapes that have been made of the sessions exactly what’s going on.) On fear, for example, Luntz writes:

Sure, the Democrats have clung to a desperate belief that Bush won because he waged a campaign of fear. The exact opposite was the case. Americans turned to him precisely because they saw him as the antidote to that fear.

Isn’t that exactly what Democrats mean by a campaign of fear? What candidate runs on the platform that they’ll continue to scare people after they win?

In the rest of the book, Luntz goes on to give details about how these principles of fear and lies can be applied. In the section on the economy for example, Luntz recommends Republicans stay away from “using facts and figures” and instead mention 9/11. And for energy policy, Luntz recommends you “never say: drilling for oil; instead say: exploring for energy” — it’s “the difference between … black goop vs. 21st Century technology and innovation” that will save us from being dependent on the Middle East.

It goes on and on like this for 160 pages — first, use lovable but vague terms, then mention scary consequences. Lies and fear, lies and fear. Luntz even occasionally concedes as much. For example, after he talks about how Republicans should speak in vague terms about “frivolous lawsuits” caused by “national greed”, he gives an example of a possible Democrat’s response:

When innocent people who are injured seek compensation from those who caused their injuries, it’s anything but frivolous. When a preventable careless medical error forces a child into a wheelchair for the rest of his life, it’s anything but frivolous. And when someone close to you suffers due to doctor negligence, their right to a day in court is anything but frivolous.

Luntz recommends changing the subject back to “fraud and abuse” (emphasis in original) if this happens.

Anyway, the point should be clear: the Americans Luntz is targeting are voting Republican not because they hold some different set of core values or beliefs, but because they were successfully deceived and scared. To use this success at deceiving the public as an excuse to get more conservative operatives into universities, where they can then deceive the public further, is just so blatantly absurd and offensive that I can hardly think of words to describe it.

Further reading: Ryan Lizza has a far better article on this than anything I could write.

posted February 27, 2005 04:14 PM (Politics) (25 comments) #

The Republican Playbook

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