{"id":24593,"date":"2011-12-03T17:05:10","date_gmt":"2011-12-03T17:05:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/how-republicans-are-being-taught-to-talk-about\/"},"modified":"2011-12-03T17:05:10","modified_gmt":"2011-12-03T17:05:10","slug":"how-republicans-are-being-taught-to-talk-about","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/how-republicans-are-being-taught-to-talk-about\/","title":{"rendered":"How Republicans are being taught to talk about Occupy Wall Street"},"content":{"rendered":"

How Republicans are being taught to talk about Occupy Wall Street<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

wilwheaton<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n
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The Republican Governors Association met this week in Florida to give GOP state executives a chance to rejuvenate, strategize and team-build. But during a plenary session on Wednesday, one question kept coming up: How can Republicans do a better job of talking about Occupy Wall Street?<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m so scared of this anti-Wall Street effort. I\u2019m frightened to death,\u201d said Frank Luntz, a Republican strategist and one of the nation\u2019s foremost experts on crafting the perfect political message. \u201cThey\u2019re having an impact on what the American people think of capitalism.\u201d<\/p>\n

Luntz offered tips on how Republicans could discuss the grievances of the Occupiers, and help the governors better handle all these new questions from constituents about \u201cincome inequality\u201d and \u201cpaying your fair share.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

This tells you almost everything you need to know about who the GOP works for, cares about, and answers to. PRO TIP: It isn\u2019t the overwhelming majority of Americans.<\/p>\n

Never once in his talking points does Luntz ever say, \u201cthe best way to deal with the issues raised by these people is to listen to them and honestly, directly address their concerns.\u201d Instead, he says things like,<\/p>\n

\n

1. Don\u2019t say \u2018capitalism.\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m trying to get that word removed and we\u2019re replacing it with either \u2018economic freedom\u2019 or \u2018free market,\u2019 \u201d Luntz said. \u201cThe public \u2026 still prefers capitalism to socialism, but they think capitalism is immoral. And if we\u2019re seen as defenders of quote, Wall Street, end quote, we\u2019ve got a problem.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

You\u2019ll note that he doesn\u2019t say \u201cIf we are the defenders of Wall Street, we\u2019ve got a problem.\u201d He says \u201cif we\u2019re seen<\/em> as defenders of Wall Street, we\u2019ve got a problem.\u201d<\/p>\n

This one, though, is probably my favorite:<\/p>\n

\n

7. The three most important words you can say to an Occupier: \u2018I get it.\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cFirst off, here are three words for you all: \u2018I get it.\u2019 \u2026 \u2018I\u00a0get<\/em>\u00a0that you\u2019re angry. I\u00a0get<\/em>\u00a0that you\u2019ve seen inequality. I\u00a0get\u00a0<\/em>that you want to fix the system.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then, he instructed, offer Republican solutions to the problem.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

You know, like cutting taxes on the 1%, eliminating funding for libraries and schools, declaring pizza a vegetable, privatizing Social Security and gutting Medicare. Oh, and blame Obama, because the last 12 years of Bush\/Cheney deregulation and crony capitalism that caused this never actually happened.<\/p>\n

Look, I\u2019m not saying that congressional Democrats are much better, but at least this makes it explicitly clear that the Republicans have no intention of doing a goddamn thing to address the suffering of millions and millions of Americans. They\u2019ll keep doing everything they can to protect the interests of the ultra-rich, while they use carefully-crafted language to trick the Tea Party Rubes into believing they\u2019re doing exactly the opposite.<\/p>\n

It will be interesting to listen to Republicans in the coming months, and see how closely they adhere to these talking points. I\u2019m guessing it will be right around 100%.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

language matters, words are deeds<\/b><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How Republicans are being taught to talk about Occupy Wall Street wilwheaton: The Republican Governors Association met this week in Florida to give GOP state executives a chance to rejuvenate, strategize and team-build. But during a plenary session on Wednesday, one question kept coming up: How can Republicans do a better job of talking about […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"link","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24593","post","type-post","status-publish","format-link","hentry","category-words","post_format-post-format-link"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6PWot-6oF","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24593","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24593"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24593\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}