Frank Luntz Tells It Like It Is...

Frank Luntz is one of America's most well known political consultants and pollster. A Conservative, Mr. Luntz has worked for several well known politicians including Newt Gingrich, Ross Perot, Pat Buchanan as well as providing counsel to President Bush regarding climate change in 2002. Mr. Luntz is also utilized frequently on Fox News over-seeing focus groups after political debates. He is also known for a now famous GOPAC internal memo that suggested to Republicans to describe Democrats and their policies as “corrupt,” "devour," "greed," "hypocrisy," "liberal," "sick," and "traitors." He also  won Politifact's "Lie of the Year" in 2010 for calling health care reform a "government takeover." 

Mr. Luntz gave a speech and took questions at his alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania on April 22 to a few dozen students. At one point, he was asked about the current state of political polarization. In short, he was uncomfortable answering unless all recording devices were turned off and his response was off the record. The representative from the school newspaper agreed to turn his recorder off, but an audience member then decided to record Luntz' response with his iphone. Mr. Luntz was aware of this nor was any consent given. While I wonder why he didn't simply deflect the question into a more comfortable subject manner, it was wrong of the student to record his comments.

That said, the toothpaste is out of the tube and I think Mr. Luntz knows how this goes from here. Mother Jones has the video and its own, more detailed write up. Luntz opines on the problem that right wing talk radio, including Mark Levin and Rush Limbaugh, etc...are causing other Conservatives like Marco Rubio on immigration reform.

Mr. Luntz seems to be a step or two ahead of many in his party as witnessed not only by his "off the record" comments at Penn, but also his January 11th column in the Washington Post, where he takes a pretty eyes wide open look at the current GOP. I agree with him that the Republican Party would be well served to rebrand their party totally in a way more in tune with the voters they so badly desire votes from.

Click here for the Mother Jones article...

Watch just the video below:







Sources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Luntz

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GOPAC

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Luntz#cite_note-27

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/04/frank-luntz-rush-limbaugh-problematic-secret-tape

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/why-republicans-should-watch-their-language/2013/01/11/0f6f41fa-56ce-11e2-bf3e-76c0a789346f_print.html