Evan Bayh is Gripped by Irrational Fear of Frank Luntz
One thing you often hear is that members of congress don’t like it when you question their “good faith” or “motives.” So it’s good to see Evan Bayh clarify that his approach to health care is dominated by cowering in fear for political reasons rather than any policy considerations:
Senator Evan Bayh, Democrat of Indiana, said many Democrats felt “unease that we did not have a strategy” to answer the criticism coming from Republican members of Congress and Republican consultants like Frank I. Luntz, an expert on the language of politics.
One question to ask is why Bayh feels it’s helpful to share this sentiment with The New York Times. Suppose, instead, that he had this thought and kept it to himself. Would any of Indiana’s citizens have been worse off? Any of America’s? Any of the six billion people on the planet? Who, exactly, is helped by Senators engaging in public hand-wringing about health care politics?
Meanwhile, another thought here is that in the United States of America we hold regular elections in which the popularity of different ideas is put to the test. Barack Obama ran for election on a platform of ambitious health care reform. His opponents mounted arguments against him. And he mounted counterarguments. He won the election. He won the election in Indiana. And his copartisans picked up seats in New Hampshire and Virginia and Colorado and North Carolina and all across the country. Yuval Levin at the Corner recently posted some data from conservative-friendly pollster Scott Rasmussen purporting to show that the GOP’s political problems aren’t severe as some people say. This polling data—the data that says Republicans are in good shape—shows that 53 percent of Americans prefer the Democrats’ approach to health care whereas just 35 percent prefer the GOP approach. That’s a gap of eighteen points, a much larger gap than Obama enjoyed overall against McCain.
Back in November, of Indianians who told exit pollsters they were most interested in health care 68 percent voted for Obama. I don’t see any reason to be terrified of Frank Luntz.
24 Responses to “Evan Bayh is Gripped by Irrational Fear of Frank Luntz”
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May 14th, 2009 at 9:19 am
Evan Bayh is conservative. Concern trolling is not limited to blogs.
May 14th, 2009 at 9:26 am
Suppose, instead, that he had this thought and kept it to himself.
As Frasier once said, “You know, Cliff, it is possible to have an unexpressed thought.”
May 14th, 2009 at 9:30 am
Didn’t Luntz suggest the opposition to health care reform was screwed if this came down to their credibility against Obama’s?
So why isn’t that Evan’s strategy?
May 14th, 2009 at 9:34 am
Evan Bayh has spent his entire political career worried about Republicans. His father lost his Senate seat to Dan Quayle. I can imagine that Evan Bayh will have a hard time ever adjusting to the new political landscape in which Democrats aren’t constantly afraid for their political lives when they dare to do what voters elected them to do.
May 14th, 2009 at 9:38 am
The Evan Bayh household was greatly enriched by WellPoint the last five years. Wife Susan flipped her stock options for over $1.5 million. Susan serves on the WellPoint board alongside William H.T. Bush, also known as Uncle Bucky to President George W. 43’s White House economic adviser Al Hubbard was on the WellPoint Board before joining the Bush league team.
Evan Bayh is a corporacrat, plain and simple. #7 on his donor list is The Carlyle Group.
May 14th, 2009 at 9:42 am
His health care plan during the campaign was not actually all that ambitious. In fact, during the primaries he talked about “expanding” health care, rather then making it universal. His plan had no mandates, and no public option.
So with mandates (which I’m not a fan of) and a public option, we would end up with a more ambitious plan then he campaigned on.
May 14th, 2009 at 9:43 am
Battle of the wordsmiths: Luntz vs. Axelrod. NYT said:
Mr. Axelrod offered suggestions on how to communicate, using “words that work” and avoiding “words that don’t work.”
Axelrod is arming Dirty Max Baucus. Both finance committee leaders, Baucus and Grassley, accept mucho dinero from for-profit hospital chains with no facilities in Montana or Iowa. Look behind the words for real policy. My guess is it will favor for-profit healthcare.
May 14th, 2009 at 9:47 am
The public option is about freedom and choice. Citizens want it, and they should have the freedom to get it, not be restricted by what the health insurance companies want for us.
There is your messaging, Evan. Frank Luntz must wish he had our side as a client, not the other, because we have the advantage. This proves Bayh is a complete idiot re: the game of politics.
May 14th, 2009 at 9:54 am
Awe more than fear is the emotion I attribute to Frank Luntz. He puts out a memo and before the day is out virtually every Republican (and their media minions) repeats his mantra. He is much more influential than Limbaugh.
There was a time when I rested assured that simple truths and arguments would overwhelm “talking point” mentality. After all the quips are vapid on their face. This is no longer so and my turn-around probably began in Florida 2000. It hints of the Suskind quote from The One Percent Solution about the neocons creating reality. The media slipstream moves too quickly for reasoned analysis.
Other than forcing the MSM to preface a statement with, “Repeating the phrases of Republican wordsmith Frank Luntz, Eric Cantor said,” I wonder what strategy and tactics our politicians might employ.
May 14th, 2009 at 9:57 am
it’s Evan Bayh who frightens me.
May 14th, 2009 at 9:58 am
It’s pretty simple. Senators and other national politicians are surrounded by other rich and powerful people who form the social context in which they live.
Most solutions to the problems we face involves appropriating resources from the obscenely rich top 1%- the very tribe the senators themselves belong to- and distributing them to everyone else. Senators are trying to impress the people higher in the social hierarchy than they are, the very people who stand to lose by implementing the right policies for the rest of us, and ignoring all the losers below them.
Our species is a social primate, and our politicians are very expectedly behaving like a bunch of chimps.
May 14th, 2009 at 10:02 am
I hate to be petty and correct you on this, but we call ourselves “Hoosiers” and not Indianians.
May 14th, 2009 at 10:12 am
1) Alex at 11 assesses the matter correctly. It should be a straightforward matter to argue that a country as rich as the USA should provide healthcare to it citizens — and that government exists to ensure that all citizens receive their just due, not just the richest 1 percent served by the Republicans.
2) It should be straightforward to point out that Republicans are lying whores who are happy to waste $2 Trillion for their patrons in Big Oil — but who always fuck the common citizens.
That Government is the only force powerful enough to protect the common citizen from the predations of the rich and their Republican whores. That when Republicans cry Freedom, they are really only talking about 400 or so Billionaires being free from any restraint of Law and from any obligation to the country which enriched them.
3) But many Democratic politicans are not Tribunes of the common plebes — they are a faction within the elite who function by being two-faced. By telling their base one thing — and then assuring their wealthy campaign donors in secret that they are not really serious — that they are merely trying to lull the rabble. To distract, subvert and derail any efforts at real change. And to then champion that sabotage as “compromise”.
May 14th, 2009 at 10:16 am
One from Indiana = Hoosier
May 14th, 2009 at 10:34 am
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. Evan Bayh is a center-right politician who belongs to the Democratic Party by birthright, much as Linc Chaffee belonged to the GOP. He is also an extremely wealthy man whose wife makes bank from the health insurance industry.
He was a semi-reliable vote for Democratic causes when the Democrats were out of power. He is a much less reliable vote now that the Democrats are in power, particularly on economic issues. There are many possible explanations for this change, but by far the most likely is that he opposes Democratic economic policies and does not want to see them implemented.
He’s willing to vote for something he knows won’t pass, out of political convenience and personal ambition, but bills that might actually pass are a different story.
Liberal Hoosiers, by and large, seem to loathe the SOB.
May 14th, 2009 at 10:35 am
Given that Mike Pence is from Indiana and dumb, and Evan Bayh is from Indiana and dumb, I’m closing in on a key observation about Indiana.
May 14th, 2009 at 10:40 am
props to Tyro upstream.
May 14th, 2009 at 10:43 am
The public option is about freedom and choice. Citizens want it, and they should have the freedom to get it, not be restricted by what the health insurance companies want for us.
Wow–We’re going to promise freedom and choice! And we’re going to do this, er, how? By grading treatments on their effectiveness, and refusing to fund those that we conclude aren’t effective? The fact is that all health-care systems have to ration somehow. Our present one does it really unjustly, and at high cost to boot. But reforming it is going to cost somebody something, and while full freedom and choice are lacking in the current system, there’s still enough of it that a lot of people can be *convinced* that they’ll lose under a new system. Actually, Bayh’s right; a strong counterattack on this question can turn public opinion on a dime [Some of us actually remember the last time this happened--and please don't tell me It's Different This Time--Those words aren't called the four most dangerous words on Wall Street for nothing]. In that regard the last election is meaningless; whatever it was, it was not a referendum on any specific health-care reform plan, and pretending otherwise is just silly. The American people didn’t vote Obama carte blanche to change the health-care system; once a proposal is out there, it’s going to be attacked, and there’s a strong likelihood [the current GOP incompetence notwithstanding] that some of those attacks might hit their mark.
May 14th, 2009 at 11:58 am
Privilege over Principle…everytime Matt.
May 14th, 2009 at 12:25 pm
Exactly. That’s why there are so many of us ex-Hoosiers.
May 14th, 2009 at 12:55 pm
Generalizing about Hoosiers based off of Mike Pence and Evan Bayh is a bit of a stretch. Might as well throw Dan Burton in there while you are reducing as all down to our lowest political denominator.
May 14th, 2009 at 1:08 pm
I am from Indiana, and the only smart Hoosier politician I can think of is Lee Hamilton. Dick Lugar is smart, but he’s wrong on a lot of issues.
May 14th, 2009 at 1:57 pm
Overwhelmed, god-smacked, pick a term, but for a seasoned elected official to be afraid of a talking head (even a good one) and saying he was “uneasy” about taking him on! It isn’t like these talking points are a “suprise”, they are on the web for god’s sake. I could come up with a rational arguement against any of them. But what Bayh isn’t saying is the “he is afraid of Personal Attacks On HIMSELF” and for that reason he is unwilling to engage in a discussion about Health Care Reform. Really??!!
Well, they call themselves Blue-Dogs…I will call them WIMPS!
I just took a quick glance at Bayh’s Senate Web page and in 2008 his name is on 5 bills, and one is a pure resolution, the other 4 are mamby-pandy resolutions to amend already existing bills, what kind of legislator is this…a relative do-nothing kind of guy who wants to be “liked”. He requested 1.45M in earmarks in 08.
As he is up for re-election in 2010, people in Indiana need to look at him past his “boyish good looks” and determine if he is really staning up for their wants, needs and values.
May 14th, 2009 at 2:27 pm
The incredible party discipline on the right is both awe inspiring and absurd, depending on the issue/frame/moment.
I skimmed Luntz’ memo and its a piece of garbage as far as helping Americans get the health care they deserve. Why is it so hard for Dems to counter such vapid and destructive talking points?
And why do Dems favor electing spineless people like Bayh?
I despise much of what the GOP has come to stand for, but they do know how to win fights. Learn from it, grow a pair, stand up to shallow, transparent and deeply unfulfilling ‘policy’ work like Luntz’s.