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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThe Agony of Frank Luntz
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/01/the-agony-of-frank-luntz/282766/Frank Luntz does not want the buffet. We are on the top floor of the Capitol Hill Club, the members-only Republican hangout a block from the Capitol, where a meaty smell is emanating from steam trays. Today's main course is ham, and Luntz shakes his head.
There's also fish, the host offersmahi mahi. No. "I'm 0 for 2," Luntz says mournfully.
"Roast chicken," the host says, but it's too late; he's lost him. "Boring," Luntz says, as we head for the elevator to the full-service dining room in the basement.
America's best-known public-opinion guru hasn't suddenly gone vegan. Luntzthe tubby, rumpled guy who runs the focus groups on Fox News after presidential debates, the political consultant and TV fixture whose word has been law in Republican circles since he helped write the 1994 Contract With Americahas always been a hard man to please. But something is different now, he tells me. Something is wrong. Something in his psyche has broken, and he does not know if he can recover.
NRaleighLiberal
(60,022 posts)"Luntz's populism has turned on itself and become its opposite: fear and loathing of the masses. "I am grateful that Occupy Wall Street turned out to be a bunch of crazy, disgusting, rude, horrible people, because they were onto something," he says. "Limbaugh made fun of me when I said that Occupy Wall Street scares me. Because he didn't hear what I hear. He doesn't see what I see." The people are angry. They want more, not because we have not given them enough but because we have given them too much. "
These people just can't even grapple with the fact that they are wrapped in a bubble of greed and distortion, and may be wrong. Horrifying. That last sentence - amazing. This man has not a shred of self-awareness or humility.
Oilwellian
(12,647 posts)Does he not realize it is our moneyed betters who control our government, and are responsible for the mess we're in?
ronnie624
(5,764 posts)As if public revenue belongs exclusively to the elite, to do with as they please.
Dawson Leery
(19,348 posts)says the masses have too much. This double standard is what has angered the populace. He has admitted such.
gaspee
(3,231 posts)That his main problem is that his worldview is just plain wrong and the wrongness of it, as opposed to the pretty words he has wrapped it in to sell it, is becoming apparent to more and more people. Not enough, yet, but too many for him to "win" anymore.
Lex
(34,108 posts)he is wrong and he's trying to blame "the people" and Obama, but he's just in denial that it's his worldview is wrong.
Wounded Bear
(58,721 posts)are those whose hatred for him is pre-loaded. What they're really saying is that we're all stupid for electing him and we should just admit it and let them take over.
JHB
(37,162 posts)...accusing anyone else of being "divisive", nor of lamenting how divided the country is. It's what you've spent your whole career working on.
Start reading some of the things Lee Atwater said once he knew his days were numbered, Frank.
Lex
(34,108 posts)He caused so much divisiveness and later regretted it but it was too late.
NRaleighLiberal
(60,022 posts)CatWoman
(79,302 posts)if that's any indication of his "judgement"
TlalocW
(15,392 posts)He's been one of the main architects in politics that has brought us to the level of vitriol he now bemoans. He's been at it for 20 years, and he's trying to blame Obama who's only starting his sixth year of his presidency, who the republicans - with their ranks still filled with racists, both subtle and loud and filled with confidence from Luntz's one-sided public opinion gathering - pledged from the beginning never to work with him on anything.
TlalocW
meow2u3
(24,774 posts)We've cracked the conservative propaganda code and he can't stand it anymore.
.... I agree with this and the other comments - this guy is suffering a terminal case of cognitive dissonance. Here's some advice for Frankie:
1) lose some weight
2) find a woman, or man if it suits you, there's nothing wrong with that
3) look at the statistics of income distribution in this country over the last 3 decades and tell me with a straight face that the government is giving too much away
4) get real douchebag
pa28
(6,145 posts)I just don't see how he could have gotten Occupy so fundamentally wrong. I don't want or need anything - he's just somehow missed that occupy is not about taking other people's money. It's about expressing anger that banks and corporations have shut ordinary people out of the political process and the economy.
He sees it as a movement of dirty, potentially dangerous moochers who want to steal all his money and stab him with a pitchfork. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.
Berlum
(7,044 posts)*Dude has a wicked bad case of RepubliBrain. You can bet your bippy he would back the Wrongheaded Warriors Against Woo who are running amuck on the Intertubes.
UTUSN
(70,744 posts)the politics but he blames OBAMA. Yaaas, that's the ticket!1 What's he going to do in Las Vegas, again?!1
PowerToThePeople
(9,610 posts)he is one disgustingly ugly puke. His insides certainly have shown through.
Just let them continue down their path. The destruction it leads to is their own.
progressoid
(49,999 posts)but if I met him on a pier on a cold lake...hmmm....
HughBeaumont
(24,461 posts)Both are in love with their own legends and live in some cosmic corporate world filled with absolutes, hilarious theories and Randian heroics.
That world sure ain't ours, and that's something they still do not (and from the looks of it, never will) get.
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Fractal_wrongness
PDittie
(8,322 posts)and that was a severe depressive episode he suffered at the end of 2012.
I ain't no doctor, but I wouldn't be surprised if we read about him suffering a Breitbart, and very soon.
UTUSN
(70,744 posts)After he blames OBAMA of all people for the polarization of the politics and recites the wingnut philosophy (no safety net, all capitalism), he seems oblivious:
*******UNQUOTE*******
.... A few weeks after our lunch, Luntz tells me he's made a move. He has changed his principal residence from Northern Virginia to a condo overlooking the Las Vegas Strip, and he's contemplating a sale of his company, Luntz Global LLC, the details of which he is not at liberty to discuss. Las Vegas, he says, represents "my chance to be intellectually challenged again" by a place that is "the closest thing to a melting pot America has to offer." As fresh starts go, it's not much, but Luntz hopes it will bring some new clarity.
The crisis began, he says, after last year's presidential election, when Luntz became profoundly depressed. For more than a month, he tried to stay occupied, but nothing could keep his attention. Finally, six weeks after the election, during a meeting of his consulting company in Las Vegas, he fell apart. Leaving his employees behind, he flew back to his mansion
in Los Angeles, where he stayed for three weeks, barely going outside or talking to anyone.
"I just gave up," Luntz says. ....
********UNQUOTE*********
Lex
(34,108 posts)"If he could, Luntz would like to have a consulting role on The Newsroom, Aaron Sorkin's HBO drama. "I know I'm not supposed to like it, but I love it," he says."
Oh I see, he wants to go Hollywood. Sheesh.
CatWoman
(79,302 posts)as long as Hollywood is looking for more crappy Reality Show ideas
Boomerproud
(7,968 posts)squeeze the living daylights out of it?
kentuck
(111,110 posts)"The people are angry. They want more, not because we have not given them enough but because we have given them too much."
===========
He was referring to Occupy Wall Street.
DemocraticWing
(1,290 posts)The article compared it to what you'd hear on Morning Joe, and I kind of agree with it. Bland "centrist" ideas that always fundamentally assume that America must be a capitalist, militaristic society.
Douglas Carpenter
(20,226 posts)xxqqqzme
(14,887 posts)caused enough agony in others for way too long.
What is that horrid thing on his head? Doesn't he make enough money to get a good piece.
1StrongBlackMan
(31,849 posts)but it would seem that Luntz's agony is in the realization that he bought into his own bullsh!t.
Gothmog
(145,619 posts)Lutz is learning that there are limits to huis ability to sell policies that actually hurt voters