GOP Strategist Enlisted To Help Derail Financial Bill

NPR: 

Now that Congress is done fighting over health care, it's on to the next big brawl: a new set of regulations for banks and financial transactions.

Republicans oppose the bill the Senate is about to take up, but in doing so, they risk being seen as siding with the bailed-out financiers of Wall Street who also oppose the bill.

So they've turned to Republican strategist and talking-point wordsmith Frank Luntz of the political consulting firm The Word Doctors.

'If There's One Thing We Can All Agree On'

Through polling and focus groups, Luntz sculpts what he calls "words that work." He instructed Senate Republicans in talking about health care, and now a leaked 17-page memo he wrote in January tells the GOP which words to use in the financial regulation debate.

Connecticut Democrat Chris Dodd, who chairs the Senate Banking Committee, on Wednesday took to the Senate floor and accused his GOP colleagues of taking their script from Luntz.

"Frank Luntz suggested that allies of the big banks say, and I quote him, 'If there's one thing we can all agree on ... it's that the bad decisions and harmful policies by Washington bureaucrats that in many ways led to the economic crash must never be repeated,' " Dodd says.

Dodd pointed out the quote was remarkably similar to this one from Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell the day before: "If there's one thing Americans agree on, when it comes to financial reform, it's absolutely certain they agree on this: Never again, never again should taxpayers be expected to bail out Wall Street from its own mistakes."

Dodd then took the unusual step of asking to enter Luntz's memo into the Congressional Record.

"I ask consent that the entire memo be put in the record," Dodd said. "I want the public to read this document that gets quoted by the other side, so they know what we're really up against here with political chicanery."

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James A. Nichols IV

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www.JimN2010.com

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"Nothing in the world can take the place of Persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan 'Press On' has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race."     ---Calvin Coolidge (1872 - 1933)

 

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Posted via email from Jim Nichols