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May 7th, 2009 - 9:09am ET
Campaign for America's Future
Conservative pollster Frank Luntz recently provided right wingers on Capitol Hill a secret 28-page memo entitled The Language of Healthcare 2009—which has leaked! The memo was intended to offer a message framing strategy to defeat President Obama’s plan to provide health care for all. But the document is more useful to progressives than conservatives.
Dr. Frank Luntz is a right-wing spinmeister who won broad influence by acting as pollster for Newt Gingrich, helping to frame the 1994 Republican Contract with America. Over the last dozen years, corporations and conservative ideologues have paid Luntz tens of millions of dollars to craft their messages, and his research has included “hundreds of thousands of telephone interviews, hundreds of dial sessions and focus groups, and literally a million research hours.” In short, he knows what he’s talking about.
Luntz briefed House Republicans about his findings at a closed-door session yesterday (where he was very angry that his memo had been leaked). The memo is based on polling and dial sessions conducted within the last few weeks. If you want all the gory details, you can read the entire memo here.The substance can be grouped into three overall lessons for progressives.
First, progressive pollsters have been entirely right about health care. Conservatives who oppose reform have very little public support.
Progressives have conducted a great deal of survey research on health care over the past two years, much of it by top pollster Celinda Lake working with the Herndon Alliance, FamiliesUSA, AFL-CIO, and Health Care for America Now.
Lake has made it clear that Americans strongly support progressive legislation to guarantee quality, affordable health care for all, as long as they can choose their doctor, their healthcare package, and their insurance provider.
Luntz agrees:
Click here for the rest of a complete analysis of Luntz' major attacks and how to fight back to hound the Republicans to create, spell out the details, and defend a Republican substitute healthcare reform plan. GOP strategy is to take down Obama's health care reform plan by scare tactics criticizing details and dwelling on what they call a government takeover that will ration healthcare and follow an impersonal one-size fits all approach.
Here are three excerpts from the secret memo featuring Sen. Jon Kyl's (R-AZ) empty Words of Hypocrisy, quoted by Luntz:
