(This video is from 2005)
Conservatives will once again try to pull a scam on the America people which is known as "The Luntz"
Frank Luntz has drafted the new GOP playbook to try and stop Financial reform and it's not going to be pretty.
Nine months after he penned a memo laying out the arguments for health care legislation's destruction, Republican message guru Frank Luntz has put together a playbook to help derail financial regulatory reform.
In a 17-page memo titled, "The Language of Financial Reform," Luntz urged opponents of reform to frame the final product as filled with bank bailouts, lobbyist loopholes, and additional layers of complicated government bureaucracy.
"If there is one thing we can all agree on, it's that the bad decisions and harmful policies by Washington bureaucrats that in many ways led to the economic crash must never be repeated," Luntz wrote. "This is your critical advantage. Washington's incompetence is the common ground on which you can build support."
Luntz continued: "Ordinarily, calling for a new government program 'to protect consumers' would be extraordinary popular. But these are not ordinary times. The American people are not just saying 'no.' They are saying 'hell no' to more government agencies, more bureaucrats, and more legislation crafted by special interests."
...read on
Republicans are ahead of the game once again. Chris Dodd is possibly backing off of the agency too. Bloggers were screaming at the administration to take more of a populist approach in their dealing with the economy, but we were ignored and then FOX News created the Teabaggers and that was that.
Marc Ambinder reports how the Democrats plan to fight back now:
In the wake of the Massachusetts Brown out -- or -- hastened by that event -- the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee wants their Senate candidate to emphasize two main points on the campaign trail: pin down Republican opposition to a tax on banks -- and pin down Republican support of the Citizens United decision, which would open the door to increased corporate influence in American elections.
73 percent of Americans say that Washington hasn't done enough to regulate Wall Street, according to the new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll. This is one reason why Democrats plan to schedule a series of votes on campaign finance -- and to try to bait Republicans into voting yes. This is one way for Democrats -- in power -- to run against powerful interests.
So the Republicans are going to run with a message that Washington caused the economic crisis by bailing out the banks and therefore Washington is too corrupt and inept to be entrusted with regulation. The Democrats are going to counter with a tax on banks and campaign finance reform. (And they're both trying to out deficit hawk each other.) Maybe it'll work, but the GOP narrative is quite elegant, while the Democrats don't seem to have any kind of plot at all.
The Dems don't have any decent public speakers either to go out in media-land and sell their messages while republicans have talk radio, sports radio and FOX News to do their bidding. Good luck winning another battle that should be easy.
It's very easy to bash and blame the government over and over again during an economic crisis because those mythical "independent voters" generally 'kick out the bums' that are in charge at the time if their own lives aren't working. That's what's happening now.
I haven't seen Axelrod be able to put together a cohesive strategy to implement any of the polices President Obama is behind and I don't believe he's figured out what to do next either. You would think that regulating the Financial world and adding a Consumer Protection Agency would be a no brainer and Americans will be behind it completely, right? Even the CEO of BOA is for it. Get ready for more psycho demonization.
I think it will finally put an end to the argument being made that teabaggers can be peeled off to join us in anything that will hurt conservatives. And Digby finishes with this:
The Democrats either didn't see that (or chose to ignore it) and foolishly went on to allow this populism to get caught up in health care reform and tie the agenda up in knots. We watched it, aghast, every day.
I guess at this point, the president can keep going on TV and getting mad at Wall Street and the Democrats can run on campaign finance reform, trap the Republicans into voting against taxing the banks and try to be deficit hawks, but the Republicans are already way ahead of the game with their much simpler anti-Washington populist narrative. It's not clear to me how the Dems catch up, but they'd better come up with something quick if November isn't going to be a bloodbath.
Update: After reading this, I think that maybe running on campaign finance reforms may actually be good. It certainly seems to be necessary. This is awful.
