Frank Luntz stopped by and left a comment on my post yesterday about his Social Security memo. Here is my response, point by point:

You would be much more effective protecting Social Security if you focus on stopping all the waste in Washington rather than complaining about my memos. You're all hyped up about my words when it's the policy that matters.

Indeed. Policy is all that matters. You argue for a harmful policy; that is, taking Social Security contributions and investing them privately, or forcing back Social Security Retirement Age to 70, or both. I view those ideas as extremely bad policy.

When Social Security was "reformed" in the Reagan years, Boomers were taken into consideration. Yet you continue to argue for a policy which double-slams them because it would layer on another cut to the one they've already taken. The only way you can sell this policy to the public is to foment fear. Hence, the argument that Social Security is "bankrupt" (it's not), and that people should control their contributions and be permitted to invest them in Wall Street investments.

One look at 401k performance over the past 4 years should be all the illustration anyone needs to know Wall Street is a dangerous place for small investors who rely upon their retirement savings to survive.

As to waste in Washington, on that point we agree. We only disagree on where money is being wasted. I could point to the incredibly duplicative "national security complex" as a complete waste of money. I could point to the two wars we put on the national credit card, too. One of those wars was fought under false pretenses while the other one was put on the back burner. Both carry immeasurable human and monetary prices which did not have to be paid.

There's a reason why Republicans won more seats in the House than in any election in decades and more local and state elections than at any time in 80 years! The reason? You.

Instead of yelling, listen. Instead of condemining the language, focus on the policy. I don't rant and rave. I pay attention to what people say, how they think, and what they want. It's a much more effective approach.

Republicans won more seats in the House because they had an efficient money machine and the anti-incumbent advantage. This isn't about me, or policy, or me trashing the way you twist the policy debate. They won because they had a stoked-up anger machine behind them pushing the narrative forward, and a whole lot of money to inject themselves into everyone's frontal lobe via television, radio and internet ads. It didn't hurt to have an entire 24/7 media machine reinforcing the message, either.

I'll give Republicans this: they understand the value of a consistent and simple message, even if it's not true. Democrats tend to go wonky and in different directions. Message discipline is not a liberal strong point. Yet.

I realize it makes you feel good to trash someone anonymously, but what have you really accomplished? Tonight I have spent 90 seconds responding to you all, and shortly I will spend two hours writing a memo that will reach millions of people and change thousands of minds.

And one final thought: there's a lot more that we all agree on than you realize. From genuinely helping those in need to fixing the education system to finding a fairer tax code, we're often on the same side. If you ever want help on these issues -- if you ever want to be constructive in your approach -- just let me know via this blog.

This is my name. I am not at all anonymous, so let's just leave that behind. As to our commenters here on C&L, they run the gamut. There's nothing wrong with speaking anonymously, and minimizing their arguments because they aren't putting their name on them is just wrong. But for now, let's deal with your final point, which is your memos, your framing, and why it matters.

My post yesterday highlighted something people need to address; namely, that mainstream media sources take your frames and echo them. You know this as well as I do: Say something often enough and it becomes fact.

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Health care reform is going to be the law of the land when the President signs it in to law tomorrow morning. When that happens, good things happen for individuals, small businesses and senior citizens. You'd think this would be what the media was talking about. But no, as John King demonstrates, what CNN deems important is the GOP threat to repeal health care reform.

KING: "Wall to Wall" tonight, a look at the next chapter in the health care political debate. The Democratic plan will soon be the law of the land. But a majority of Americans tell us they don't like it. And as the president hits the road again to sell it, the big question is whether passage of this landmark proposal gives him a political bounce. There is no doubt, check this out, that he could use one. Let's take a look at the president's approval rating since taking office. We'll go back to the beginning here and watch as this plays out.

In a remarkable exchange with former Clinton press secretary Dee Dee Myers and former Mitt Romney* communications director Kevin Madden, King leads off by pointing to the full 2,074-page bill while holding Michelle Bachmann's newly-introduced measure to repeal the bill. Despite DeeDee Myers' best efforts to focus the discussion on what reform really means to every American, Kevin Madden (with King's assistance) drives the debate back to vague, unsubstantiated lies and right-wing rumors.

No matter how many times Myers tries to tick off benefits of reform, Madden continues to spout the latest Luntz talking points with John King's full blessing. The most remarkable comment comes from Madden at about 3:30, where Myers points out that on Wednesday morning, the majority of Americans will wake up and discover they have the very same health insurance they had last week.

Madden's response? "The American people have been sold a bill of goods...they're going to expect something now."

Well, yes. Exactly. And what will happen when they get it? Who is selling the bill of goods here? As facts turn to reality, and people see benefits like small businesses getting tax credits and senior citizens saving money on prescription drugs, who will they believe sold them that bill of goods?

Please, Republicans, keep selling that repeal message. Sell it hard so we can elect an even bigger Democratic majority in November.

*corrected

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I actually found a pretty good segment on TV: Kathleen Sebelius, the Secretary of Health and Human Services was excellent today on CNN's State of the Union. She spoke clearly and effectively of the importance that there be a public option available for health care to all Americans. No Luntz talking points, just straight talk about how the public option will benefit Americans.

SEBELIUS: Well, I think that competition is a good thing, that most Americans understand that choice and competition is what we want. So, if you look at a health exchange, a marketplace, where people can have some options -- in many parts of the country, private insurers have no competitor, in -- in a state like my own home state of Kansas. There is a dominant insurance company in a lot of the states.

So, we created a public option for state employees, so they could choose side by side benefits and prices. Competition is good. You can write the rules for a level playing field.

The president does not want to dismantle privately-owned plans. He doesn't want the 180 million people who have employer coverage to lose that coverage. He wants to strengthen the marketplace.

But, you know, I -- I don't think it's a big surprise that a lot of insurers say, you know, what we would really like is, everybody who doesn't have insurance to be told they must buy it, and buy it only from us.

The president feels that having a public option side by side, same playing field, same rules, will give Americans choice and will help lower costs for everybody. And that's a good thing

.

Wow, who would have thought that Insurance companies would be against a public option. She beat back the "trigger" that many HICers want to try and put in place. She said that we can't afford to wait for some trigger to go off. The time is now to attack this problem.

KING: ...So, how about a trigger? How about you enact reforms that give the private insurance industry, maybe it's three years; maybe it's five years, and if, by then, they haven't lowered costs, they haven't brought the uninsured into the thing, then the government option would trigger and kick in then"? What's wrong with that?

SEBELIUS: Well, there are a lot of, now, specific ideas being discussed on Capitol Hill. And, certainly, the trigger is one of them.

But what Massachusetts found when they moved to insuring all citizens of the commonwealth is that, unless you address costs from the very first day, unless you have a system where cost control and cost lowering is one of the goals, you don't do so well. You -- you can bring everybody into the system, but the costs may rise.

So, I think having a public option from the outset, having the design, being competitive, and making sure there is some choice, making sure that consumers have a choice of plan, and, for the first time ever in the United States, making sure that insurers don't decide who gets covered -- if you got a preexisting condition, we want you in the marketplace, we want you and your family to be covered, and we want you to be able to go to a doctor of your choice and have preventive care and wellness care. That's part of reforming the system.

Goodbye to the "trigger effect." It won't work and it gives the health care industry a license to fleece us. And I loved what she said here.

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Frameshop:

A "con," a "scam," a "grift," a boo-boo, a bunko, a flim flam. All these are synonyms for what street crime experts call the "Confidence Trick."

I will add one more synonym to the list: The Luntz.

The Confidence Trick has many names: Three-Card-Monte, The Spanish Prisoner, The Protection Scheme, The Free Pet Scam, Pig-in-a-Poke, Lottery Fraud by Proxy, The Pigeon Drop, Psychic Surgery.

The list is long long, but the lure of the Luntz is always the same: easy money. Relieve the mark of his cash. And it works just about every time.

This weekend, Bill Maher was the mark and HBO's Real Time was the venue for a scam being run coast-to-coast by the grand master grifter of American Politics: Flim Flam Frank, who runs this scam under the name "Frank Luntz."

The name of the Luntz? Let's call it the "Advice to Democrats Scam" or even better: "The Angry Dem Flim Flam" Posing as a expert on winning elections, give advice to Democrats about winning elections by not being "angry." Insulting by nature, the advice leads to contentious arguments the end goal of which is to create a ruckus that drives book sales.

GOP pollster Frank Luntz has been advising conservative Republicans for years on how to exploit language to smear Dems and win elections. It was Luntz, for example, who teamed up with Newt Gingrich to shape the Contract with America in 1994.

And now, Luntz has taken to the pages of the Huffington Post to offer the left some advice: don’t act like his Republican clients.

I am not in the habit of offering partisan linguistic advice to Democrats. But in the genuine spirit of bipartisanship - seriously - I thought this is the perfect time to convey a simple point to the still-euphoric faces of Democrat activists: Don’t twist the knife. […]

Democracy is at its best when its practioners use language to unite and explain rather than divide and attack…. We need an intelligent debate, not a sound-bite contest.

Given Luntz's record, this just doesn't make any sense.

The Daily Show lampoons President Bush's fake Town Hall meetings, and uses republican strategist Frank Luntz as the go to guy.

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The truth revealed once again by the fake news show that exposes fake town hall meetings!

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(h/t Heather.)

Oh, the irony! Frank Freakin' Luntz, the man so amoral, he actually got censured by his trade association, lecturing Democrats about right and wrong for using "misleading" poll-driven language? I think my heart's about to seize from me laughing so hard. Republicans are such flaming hypocrites, aren't they?

Wikipedia:

Luntz's specialty is “testing language and finding words that will help his clients sell their product or turn public opinion on an issue or a candidate.”

You mean poll-driven language, Frank? It couldn't be that you're angry that we're using your tactics against you, could it?

In 1997, he was reprimanded by the American Association for Public Opinion Research for refusing to release poll data to support his claimed results "because of client confidentiality". Diane Colasanto, who was president of the AAPOR when it reprimanded Luntz, said, "It is simply wanting to know, How many people did you question? What were the questions? We understand the need for confidentiality, but once a pollster makes results public, the information needs to be public. People need to be able to evaluate whether it was sound research."[12]

In 2000 he was censured by the National Council on Public Polls "for allegedly mischaracterizing on MSNBC the results of focus groups he conducted during the [2000] Republican Convention." In September 2004, MSNBC dropped Luntz from its planned coverage of that year's presidential debate, following a letter from Media Matters that outlined Luntz's GOP ties and questionable polling methodology.[13][14] In a video piece, entertainers and libertarians Penn & Teller lambasted Luntz for his comment that the key to survey polling is "to ask a question in the way that you get the right answer".[15] In the wake of the 2008 Presidential election, fellow Republican and prominent pollster Bill McInturff criticized Luntz before journalists at a National Journal Breakfast, insisting that Luntz is "a moron" and lambasting him for mocking Senator McCain's inability to use a Blackberry, which McInturff attributed to the injuries that McCain sustained while a prisoner of war in Vietnam.[16]

Nah, that can't be it. Because from what I read, you're now working for the Democrats, too:

Luntz simply says he's on fire, chalking up his expanded business and full calendar of speeches to his 2008 election dial-testing of voters for Fox News Channel. "Everyone saw my dial sessions, the debate analysis, the ad tests, and the accurate prognosis. Now, everyone wants to apply what they saw and figure out what they can learn from it," he says. "I see no reason not to provide the analyses for those who want it."

Democrats cheer. "Frank has been helpful as we continue to develop our broad-base strategy," says a House operative. Jim Manley, spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, adds: "To the extent that Senator Reid likes to hear from pollsters, which is rarely if ever, he always appreciates hearing what Frank has to say." And, he adds, "it has the added benefit of making Republicans mad."

And speaking of ethical dilemmas, Frank, that sort of creates a problem for you, doesn't it? Because while you're on Fox News lambasting Democrats (some of whom may be your clients) and praising Republicans (many of whom are your clients), shouldn't you disclose exactly who paid for your services?

Because if you didn't, that would be wrong.