The Frank Luntz Avoid-the-Facts (ATF) Strategy Playbook
As far as I'm concerned, the hottest thing off the presses (literally, mine was hot coming off the Kinko's printer) is The Luntz ATF Playbook (zip file consisting of two PDF's).
That gem is 160 pages of Frank Luntz's advice to GOP-sters for keeping the House in 2006, which I am glad to say he admonishes may be lost if those running don't work and work hard. He even goes so far as to explain how Dems are better at the things at which we are better ( and why) as well as how to appropriate from us our corner on those things. Yes, this is the playbook of a man whose dream, like Karl Rove's (among many others) is generations of Republican domination. And I gotta say it does my heart good to see just how scared of us they really are.
They are so scared in fact that they have taken to abandoning the idea that they have better ideas or a better philosophy; Luntz admits they don't - that liberals and conservatives essentially want the same things and fear the same things - but that the liberal and conservative approaches to those things are the main difference between them. Hence (though I haven't read it in his words yet) their only hope is to co-opt our terms because our terms embody those shared principles in more appealing words than conservative terms. I would add that liberal language embodies our principles better because it is a reflection of actual philosophy encompassing actual compassion and humanism. Their language (now being rapidly transferred into our terms) couldn't win elections for - what, 40 years? - because it does embody their values - and in essence their values are greed and militarism, both born of fear; fear of not having enough food, money, shelter (resources) and if or when acquired can only be protected through might but not justice, not liberty, and definitely not compassion.
They are cloaking their philosophy of greed and military excess in words liberals have imbued with meaning that reflect liberal values. Take a term like Clean Skies for example. Liberals have worked to make clean skies a reality in people's minds. Liberals did the heavy political lifting of environmental stewardship. Because of that Americans understand that clean skies mean clean air and that clean air should be a fundamental right they can expect. Liberals created value in that phrase, now conservatives are stealing that value and using it to cloak their actual anti-regulation (ergo anti-environmental) agenda.
Conservatives can not win in 2006 unless they use our terms - and we must make sure they don't - they can't - we must beat them to the punch by appropriating whatever words they are currently using and those they intend to use; that's where your reading the Avoid-the-Facts Playbook comes in...
There are a few blogs already dissecting and analyzing the Luntz ATF Playbook, and I will add them to the Research section of my links list, as well as the ATF Playbook itself. I expect everyone to print, share, read, memorize and digest the information in that playbook - and most of all to apply it.
There will be a test, in 2006.
That gem is 160 pages of Frank Luntz's advice to GOP-sters for keeping the House in 2006, which I am glad to say he admonishes may be lost if those running don't work and work hard. He even goes so far as to explain how Dems are better at the things at which we are better ( and why) as well as how to appropriate from us our corner on those things. Yes, this is the playbook of a man whose dream, like Karl Rove's (among many others) is generations of Republican domination. And I gotta say it does my heart good to see just how scared of us they really are.
They are so scared in fact that they have taken to abandoning the idea that they have better ideas or a better philosophy; Luntz admits they don't - that liberals and conservatives essentially want the same things and fear the same things - but that the liberal and conservative approaches to those things are the main difference between them. Hence (though I haven't read it in his words yet) their only hope is to co-opt our terms because our terms embody those shared principles in more appealing words than conservative terms. I would add that liberal language embodies our principles better because it is a reflection of actual philosophy encompassing actual compassion and humanism. Their language (now being rapidly transferred into our terms) couldn't win elections for - what, 40 years? - because it does embody their values - and in essence their values are greed and militarism, both born of fear; fear of not having enough food, money, shelter (resources) and if or when acquired can only be protected through might but not justice, not liberty, and definitely not compassion.
They are cloaking their philosophy of greed and military excess in words liberals have imbued with meaning that reflect liberal values. Take a term like Clean Skies for example. Liberals have worked to make clean skies a reality in people's minds. Liberals did the heavy political lifting of environmental stewardship. Because of that Americans understand that clean skies mean clean air and that clean air should be a fundamental right they can expect. Liberals created value in that phrase, now conservatives are stealing that value and using it to cloak their actual anti-regulation (ergo anti-environmental) agenda.
Conservatives can not win in 2006 unless they use our terms - and we must make sure they don't - they can't - we must beat them to the punch by appropriating whatever words they are currently using and those they intend to use; that's where your reading the Avoid-the-Facts Playbook comes in...
There are a few blogs already dissecting and analyzing the Luntz ATF Playbook, and I will add them to the Research section of my links list, as well as the ATF Playbook itself. I expect everyone to print, share, read, memorize and digest the information in that playbook - and most of all to apply it.
There will be a test, in 2006.
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