Let's be Frank

Politico's Mike Allen shares excerpts from the Frank Luntz's latest exercise in conservative spinmeistering. Allen received a bootleg of a confidential 26-page report from Luntz that is circulating among Capitol Hill Republicans. It his game plan for defeating health care reform by seeming to embrace health care reform.

"The status quo is no longer acceptable," Luntz writes. "If the dynamic becomes ‘President Obama is on the side of reform and Republicans are against it,’ then the battle is lost and every word in this document is useless."

From the extracts Allen shares, the rest of "this document" deals with how Republicans can steer constituents towards keeping the "current arrangement."

Luntz's focus is which words sway public opinion. In my experience, visuals leave a more lasting impression, and words that effectively conjure evocative mental images.

Want to push back against "Do you want government bureaucrats standing between you and your doctor?" Have patients show up at town halls waving thick stacks of insurance company rejection letters and medical bills. There is inefficient, private-sector bureaucracy on display. Bureaucracy you can see. Bureaucracy you can touch. Bureaucracy patients relate to, remember, and universally hate. It's evocative of everything that is wrong with our for-profit, insurance company-rationed "arrangement."

Instead of reformers trying to defend against phrases like “Washington takeover,” “stand in line” or “Washington bureaucrats in charge of healthcare,” displaying sheaves of insurance company rejection letters and medical bills will leave a more lasting impression. They speak wordless volumes about what is hopelessly wrong with the health care system that Americans elected Obama to reform and that GOP spinmeisters want desperately to preserve.

In his latest scareware offering, “The Language of Healthcare 2009,” Luntz provides ten handy tips for the GOP. Most deal with how to best demonize the health care reform to which they have no alternative but the "current arrangement." He sums up that with what he doesn't say in suggestion ten:

(10) It’s not enough to just say what you’re against. You have to tell them what you’re for. It’s okay (and even necessary) for your campaign to center around why this healthcare plan is bad for America. But if you offer no vision for what’s better for America, you’ll be relegated to insignificance at best and labeled obstructionist at worst.

And frankly, that is just what the GOP does not have, something to be for.

UPDATE: Read full document at Think Progress.

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