Bill Berkowitz
February 10, 2007

Frank Luntz calls Republican leadership in Washington 'One giant whining windbag'

On the outs with the GOP, legendary degrader of discourse is moving to California

He doesn't make great art; nothing he does elevates the human spirit; he doesn't illuminate, he bamboozles. He has become expert in subterfuge, hidden meanings, word play and manipulation. Frank Luntz has been so good at what he does that those paying close attention gave it its own name: "Luntzspeak"(For more see the National Environmental Trust's Luntzspeak website).

In a 10-page addendum to his new book ""Words that Work -- It's Not What You Say Its What People Hear," Luntz, formerly a top political pollster for the Republican Party, may have written so critically of the party's recent efforts that he has become persona non grata. Luntz used to be one of the party's go-to-guys for political guidance and strategy, a counselor to such GOP stalwarts as former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, former New York City Major Rudy Giuliani and Trent Lott.

"The Republican Party that lost those historic elections was a tired, cranky shell of the articulate reformist, forward-thinking movement that was swept into office in 1994 on a wave of positive change," Luntz wrote. According to syndicated columnist Robert Novak, Luntz went on to say that the Republicans of 2006 "were an ethical morass, more interested in protecting their jobs than protecting the people they served. The 1994 Republicans came to 'revolutionize' Washington. Washington won."

That's not the kind of language entrenched party leaders, who would prefer to write off the results of the November election as an aberration, want to hear. "They do not want to hear the truth," Luntz told Novak.

Luntz "has clashed frequently with Rep. John Boehner, the current Republican leader of the House who stifled ethics legislation last year when he was still majority leader," Novak wrote in a column headlined "The GOP's Cassandra."

"Boehner, elected chairman of the House Republican Conference when the party took control in 1995, tried then to keep Luntz from addressing closed-door meetings but was overruled by Speaker Gingrich," Novak pointed out. "When Luntz in October 2005 publicly warned of rejection by voters in 2006, he was forced to deliver an abject apology before he could speak at a retreat of House Republicans held at the Library of Congress. After seven straight years on the program, Luntz was kept off last week's 2007 session at Cambridge, Md., by Boehner."

'One giant whining windbag'

"It's just like they have become one giant whining windbag," Luntz said of the Republican Washington leadership to TheNewRepublicOnline's Isaac Chotiner. "They are adrift and they are leaderless," he said. "When they came into the House they held a press conference and I was just sickened. It was all complaints about process." His tone shifts to a higher pitch as he mimics a generic Republican lawmaker: "'We're not being allowed to offer amendments; we're not being allowed our time on the floor.' It was the worst sort of partisan whining."

Luntz shot to notoriety in political circles when, in 1994, he co-authored the "Contract with America" with Newt Gingrich; an effort that some political observers credit with being a factor in winning GOP control over Congress for the first time in decades. In addition to crafting the "Contract," he developed a strategy for presenting it to the nation. After that, advice from Luntz and "Luntzspeak" itself was as good as gold for the GOP.

Prior to teaming up with Gingrich, Luntz did polling for Pat Buchanan's 1992 attempt at wresting the GOP's presidential nomination from George H.W. Bush, and on Ross Perot's independent general election campaign. "Not particularly ideological or partisan," Chotiner pointed out, "Luntz focused on disaffected and disgruntled voters -- the type that both Buchanan and Perot appealed to." And that's what attracted Gingrich: "Frank was the first person to understand the scale of radicalism in the middle class," Gingrich has said. "He understands the citizen populist reaction against government in a way that is very helpful."

By 1998, with the "Contract" victory under his belt, Luntz "advised Republicans trying to impeach Bill Clinton," Chotiner pointed out. "And, over the last decade, his memos and ideas have been more influential and widely circulated than those of any other message guru."

These days, the University of Pennsylvania and Oxford-educated Luntz is not a happy camper: "From Gingrich to former Representative Dick Armey, it seems that, the closer you were to the Republican Revolution, the more despondent you are about what that revolution has become," Chotiner noted. "For his part, Luntz is going farther than other GOP critics -- literally. He recently bought a condominium in sunny Santa Monica, California, and he's intent on dispensing with the capital city altogether. But, in his anger and disappointment with the politics and culture of Washington, he is forgetting one thing: He, as much as anyone else, is responsible for the very mess he desperately wants to escape."

Although Luntz's relationships with current GOP congressional House leaders has soured, he still has a warm spot in his heart for Gingrich. "He is brilliant--an intellectual genius and someone who genuinely wanted to spark a nationwide debate involving every American about the future of the country," Luntz told Chotiner. He then "excoriate[ed] those who tried to attack Gingrich over ethics violations (the House ethics committee eventually fined the former speaker $300,000 for misusing tax-exempt funds to support a college course he taught)."

Chotiner writes, "in Luntz's telling, what was once a visionary movement of bold ideas has been consumed by the nasty and anti-intellectual culture that dominates Washington."

"I read these blogs," Luntz said. "'They are so bitter. So bitter and so angry...It's not my style...I think Washington, D.C., is intellectually tired."

While Luntz may be on point about the current sad state of affairs in Washington, D.C., he seems less than introspective about his role in making it this way since, as Chotiner pointed out, "Luntz's career has been about nothing so much as cheapening language and obscuring honest discussion."

When "tort reform" was debated in 2005, Luntz authored a memo "which eventually leaked to the press," advising Republicans that while "It is tempting to counter-attack using facts and figures. Resist the temptation...The President's language works because it speaks to a series of individual proposals that common sense suggests will lead to job creation."

But Luntz's greatest influence during the past few years may have been in areas related to the environment. He advocated countering the public's negative perception of the GOP's environmental record by using such terms as "common-sense solutions," and "balanced approaches," instead of "rollbacks" and "deregulation." And instead of talking about "global warming," he suggested using the term "climate change," and emphasizing the need for "sound science."

In 2003, during a debate over global warming, Luntz wrote a memo saying: "Should the public come to believe that the scientific issues are settled, their views about global warming will change accordingly. Therefore, you need to continue to make the lack of scientific certainty a primary issue," despite the fact that there is no "lack of scientific certainty."

Recently, however, despite the fact that some Republicans -- such as Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe -- are sticking with Luntz's old playbook on global warming, Luntz himself has changed his mind and has come to accept the reality of global warming.

According to Chotiner, Luntz, who has been a major player in crafting the great partisan divide in Washington, takes no responsibility for it. "I wouldn't change anything," he told Chotiner:

Pushed on whether his snappy and often misleading slogans hurt political debate, he is circumspect, saying only that sloganeering has been going on for 150 years. As for partisanship, which he lists as one of his main reasons for wanting to escape the Beltway, he is equally remorseless. But didn't the Clinton impeachment, which he helped bring about, play a crucial role in creating the climate he so detests? 'He should have resigned,' Luntz says curtly of Clinton, although he does later admit that Republicans were too angry during this time. Talking to him, it's hard not to get the sense that what he really doesn't like about Washington is that Republicans simply are not winning as much. In short, message discipline can't mask what most Americans see as a failed administration and a corrupt party. And, for this message shaper, nothing could be more frustrating.

For Boehner and colleagues it can't be easy ostracizing Luntz. As Geoffrey Nunberg pointed out in his 2006 book titled "Talking Right: How Conservatives Turned Liberalism into a Tax-Raising, Latte-Drinking, Sushi-Eating, Volvo-Driving, New York Times-Reading, Body-Piercing, Hollywood-Loving, Left-Wing Freak Sow" (Public Affairs, 2006), "Luntz's achievements have become so legendary that he's often given credit for introducing turns of phrase that have actually been part of the political lexicon for decades, in something like the way every political witticism is sooner or later attributed to Will Rogers or Winston Churchill."

Nunberg, a linguist who teaches at the School of Information of the University of California at Berkeley, also noted that "Luntz has an undeniable gift for concocting phrases and a genius for self-promotion, and he has managed to persuade a lot of people that he has reduced the art of sloganeering to a science, often suggesting that his choice of words is governed by arcane linguistic rules," claims that Nunberg maintains are ridiculous.

Regardless of the accuracy of his grandiose self-image, "it's Luntz's work that Democrats usually have in mind when they talk about the need to 'reframe the issues'..."Nunberg wrote.

Although Luntz is currently out of favor with the GOP leadership and is moving to the West Coast, he is not likely to be leaving the public spotlight anytime soon. His book is doing well and, as Grist magazine's Amanda Griscom Little pointed out in the introduction to a recent interview with Luntz -- during which he excoriated environmentalists for being "uncompromising," "unyielding" and "mean" -- he "has achieved enough notoriety to be lampooned on 'The Daily Show,'" where correspondent Samantha Bee described him as having "made a brilliant career of spraying perfume on dog turds."