Frank Luntz: saying your opponent wants to kill you is just as bad saying you want to kill your opponent



by Goldy, 01/13/2011, 12:37 PM



I tuned in to NPR’s To the Point this morning, just in time to hear Republican framing guru Frank Luntz insist that liberal political rhetoric has been just as violent and inflammatory as that on the right. And to prove his point, Luntz referenced former Democratic Congressman Alan Grayson’s infamous health care speech, in which he provocatively proclaimed:



“If you get sick in America, this is what the Republicans want you to do: If you get sick America, the Republican health care plan is this: Die quickly.”



Uh-huh. As I tweeted back at Luntz a few minutes later: “No, saying your opponents want to kill you is not as inflammatory as saying you want to kill your opponents.” So far, Luntz has yet to reply.



Luntz is no idiot. In fact, he’s probably the best there is at what he does. So the fact that Luntz is out there pushing the bullshit frame that liberal rhetoric has been just as violent and inflammatory as right-wing rhetoric, pretty much establishes this frame as the default posture for the Republican Party as a whole, and their surrogates. No apologies, no regrets.



The GOP establishment not only defends its violent rhetoric, apparently, they think it’s a winning strategy.

let’s assume the constant atmosphere of violent rhetoric did have some effect. Why would the right stop it? The press I’m reading and seeing is mostly of the “pox on both sides violent rhetoric” variety. Yes, Palin is running from her crosshairs, but at the end of the day she was never viable and the people who support her, which is to say, give her money, aren’t going to stop doing so. They’ll believe he was “just a crazy” or that Jared Loughner was really a left winger, of whatever it takes to believe it had nothing to do with her: or with them. Two months from now this won’t be shown to have moved the needle on the polls, and it won’t have destroyed the career of anyone who mattered.



Moreover, the fact is that violence often does work. For example, when Doctor Tiller, one of only three late term abortion providers in the entire country, was killed, his family chose to shut down his clinic. His assassin got what he wanted, and said he was perfectly happy to go to jail. And why not? If you believe that Dr. Tiller was a mass murderer, then killing him is just.



As long as politicians who aren’t Republicans (I won’t say left wingers, Giffords isn’t particularly left wing) are constantly called traitors, some people will take that seriously. And if they are traitors, well, they deserve death, don’t they?



Right wing talk of violence is acceptable in American society. And it will continue because violence and the threat of violence works in American society.

The political class works for the corporate class, not the other way around. It doesn’t have to be that way, all the levers are available to crush the corporate class any time the political class wants to, but the fact remains that the corporate class calls the shots, not the other way around. During the debate over TARP calls against ran from 100:1 against to 1200:1 against. It still passed. The public option was more popular than the health care bill that passed by a huge margin, but it was traded away early and never seriously considered.

most members at the very top of the corporate class, like the Koch brothers, live in such rarified circumstances that they hardly ever see an ordinary person. They fly in private jets, they stay in $50,000/night hotel rooms or private estates and so on. Politicians, on the other hand, have to glad hand. It is their job to handle ordinary people. They are, and always will be, exposed to violence.



If that violence is inspired by the right, if the right are the people showing up with guns, well, what’s the problem, exactly, for the corporate class? If politicians are scared to do anything non-right wing, how does that hurt the very rich? Oh sure, violence might get out of control, but it’s pretty clear they don’t really believe that, or they wouldn’t have spent hundreds of millions on the Republican side of the last election, would they have?



No, Giffords is a sign post on the road. That sign post may say stop, but this intersection will at most be a slight pause in the trip.

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No, boys and girls, saying unkind things about someone is really and truly not "violent rhetoric." Even saying that the Right is made up entirely of ignoramuses, lunatics, liars, criminals, and economic predators isn't "violent rhetoric." It may be unkind, but then, what are you supposed to say when it's the honest-to-gosh truth? Just not say anything? Well, that seems pretty much what the Right has in mind: freedom to spread its psychotic lies without any answer at all.Here are some tips for the thugs and loonies of the Right: Talking about applying "Second Amendment solutions, or answering with Mr. Smith and Mr. Wesson, or picturing people you disagree with in crosshairs, that's violent rhetoric. Packing heat at public gatherings where they have no place isn't violent, it's an outright threat of violence, verging toward a promise. If you're too stupid or dishonest to understand or acknowledge these obvious realities, then you probably don't have either the sense or integrity to apply the obvious solution, which would be to keep your lying trap shut.Simply spewing any filthy lie that's kicking around the fetid swamp that is your brain . . . well, that's a thumbnail sketch of aSo we've got Congresswoman Virginia Foxx announcing that Jared Loughner is a Communist, which is the opposite of conservatism.Thanks to our colleague Goldy at horsesass.org for catching this gem:I still mean to come back to that post of Ian Welsh's about violence and right-wing rhetoric in his post "Why the right wing isn't going to stop violent rhetoric," which I've touched on here and here , but I'm not sure I've really passed on the most straightforward part of Ian's point.Ian acknowledges that from what he hears the "political class" has indeed had a scare thrown into it by the Tucson shootings, and points out that "it is useful to the corporate class for the political class to live in fear," the reality being that:And the reality of the corporate class is that:Again: "If that violence is inspired by the right, if the right are the people showing up with guns, well, what’s the problem, exactly, for the corporate class? If politicians are scared to do anything non-right wing, how does that hurt the very rich?"

Labels: Ian Welsh, right-wing bulllies, Virginia Foxx