National Journal: Luntz Fails to Disclose Rubio Connection

Rogelio V. Solis/AP Photo, Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

by BREITBART NEWS4 Feb 20161,286

S.V. Dáte writes at National Journal:

Polit­ic­al junkies who fol­low Re­pub­lic­an mes­saging guru Frank Luntz know how he felt that Marco Ru­bio per­formed in the most re­cent GOP pres­id­en­tial de­bate—his tele­vised fo­cus group, his Twit­ter stream, and his in­ter­views left no doubt that he’s a Ru­bio fan.

What they prob­ably don’t know about is Luntz’s close re­la­tion­ship with Ru­bio over the years, and how Ru­bio paid Luntz’s firm a third of a mil­lion dol­lars to pro­duce and pro­mote a book that Ru­bio used to im­prove his statewide name re­cog­ni­tion in Flor­ida a dec­ade ago.

It’s not clear wheth­er Fox News was aware of that his­tory when it broad­cast Luntz quizz­ing fo­cus-group mem­bers fol­low­ing the de­bate, eli­cit­ing re­sponses such as “con­fid­ent,” “elo­quent,” elect­able,” and “pres­id­en­tial.” (But not fol­low­ing up with one dis­sid­ent who called Ru­bio an “at­tract­ive op­por­tun­ist.”)

Fox did not re­spond to a Na­tion­al Journ­al query. Nor did Luntz, a pop­u­lar con­sult­ant in Re­pub­lic­an circles whose cli­ents, ac­cord­ing to Fed­er­al Elec­tion Com­mis­sion re­cords, have in­cluded House Speak­er Paul Ry­an, Rep. Tom Price (R-GA) of Geor­gia, and the Amer­ic­an Cross­roads su­per PAC in re­cent years.

Between May 2005 and Au­gust 2007, when Ru­bio was first speak­er-des­ig­nate and then speak­er of the House, the Re­pub­lic­an Party of Flor­ida paid Luntz’s con­sult­ing com­pan­ies a total of $345,451, ac­cord­ing to Flor­ida Di­vi­sion of Elec­tions fil­ings. That was the peri­od when Luntz helped Ru­bio pro­duce his “100 In­nov­at­ive Ideas” pro­ject, which in­cluded a book of policy pro­pos­als that Ru­bio pushed dur­ing his two years in charge of the state House.

[…]

In 2007, Luntz praised Ru­bio’s 100 Ideas pro­ject in a Wash­ing­ton Post op-ed, writ­ing that it brought for­ward “the prin­ciples of good gov­ern­ment and polit­ic­al ac­count­ab­il­ity.” That art­icle also failed to men­tion his role in the book’s pro­duc­tion and pro­mo­tion—a pro­ject that boos­ted Ru­bio’s name around the state, lay­ing the ground­work for his suc­cess­ful U.S. Sen­ate run in 2010.

Mike Fas­ano, a Re­pub­lic­an who served with Ru­bio in the state le­gis­lature, said he was aware that the party had paid for Luntz’s work, but had not known how much. “Oh, my Lord. I’m in the wrong busi­ness,” said Fas­ano, now the elec­ted tax col­lect­or of Pasco County. “When you have a guy like Frank who col­lects a pro-Marco group, of course they’re go­ing to say that Marco won.”

Luntz’s praise began not long after the de­bate began last Thursday. Just 12 minutes in, Luntz de­clared in a tweet: “Ex­cel­lent start for him to­night.” Halfway through, at 9:51 pm, Luntz tweeted: “This is @Mar­coR­u­bio’s best de­bate so far. He’s mak­ing people switch over to him.”

Read the rest here.

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2016 Presidential Race, Marco Rubio, Frank Luntz 

Report: CBS News, Frank Luntz Cut Muslim-Americans’ U.S. Criticism From Focus Group

by JOHN NOLTE21 Dec 20150

Republican frontrunner Donald Trump hasalready exposed a 14 year-old DC Media  cover up involving numerous Muslim-American celebrations of the collapse of the World Trade Center on 9/11. Now, according to a new report, in their never-ending quest to disqualify Trump and make serial-liar Hillary Clinton president, CBS News has apparently been caught red-handed cutting footage from a focus group mediated by Establishment Republican Frank Luntz that shows American Muslims criticizing the United States:

The Intercept:

[I]n interviews with The Intercept, two Muslim Americans who took part in the group complained that CBS edited out parts of the discussion where they raised their own concerns — including critiques of U.S. militarism, surveillance, and entrapment.

They also said that Frank Luntz, the right-wing pollster who led the focus group, silenced members of the group when they criticized discriminatory U.S. government policies.

One  woman claimed that she brought up Luntz’s Jewishness:

For example, [Sarah] Harvard wrote that after Luntz asked the group whether they were Americans or Muslims first, she chose to demonstrate the offensive nature of the question by asking, “Well, are you an American or Jewish first?”

From the sound of it, Luntz was far from objective. One participant said:

He kept saying how he felt bad that no one listens to Muslims and how he wanted to give us an opportunity to talk to the general population. But how can that happen when we’re manipulatively edited to have us fit their own narrative and agenda?

According to Ms. Harvard’s own Facebook post, Luntz did not just edit out the inconvenient moments that didn’t fit his desired narrative, he went so far as to silence her when she tore into the American government as a racist institution that has “killed many Muslims.”

He also had silenced me and other participants who have routinely brought up the fact the government has enacted in state violence against the Muslim community — whether that may be through entrapment cases and surveillance programs — and our concerns about institutional racism. He shut me down when I said that President Obama and Hillary Clinton has killed many Muslims under the administration when we were discussing Trump, and ironically for a GOP strategist, he shut me down when I talked about how Democrats have enacted some of the most deadliest and discriminatory policies against Muslims. He also decided to stop letting me speak when I started talking about how Muslims should start focusing on combatting government policies rather than rushing to condemn terrorism or Islamophobia exclusively. They also cut out portions of where participants talked about media accountability when discussing Islam.

As you watch the segment below, it is painfully obvious that Luntz and CBS News had an agenda to show this group as one-dimensional patriots who are victims of discrimination, which is in and of itself a bigoted portrayal.

These are real people with real beliefs. Like all people, the American Muslim community is made up of complicated individuals with their own complicated view of the body politic. From the looks of it, rather than treat people like people, Luntz and CBS News instead chose to treat them as politically correct playthings that could be manipulated into political weapons against Donald Trump.

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Note how at the end of the segment Luntz  closes by bashing Trump and talks at length about how he didn’t want to manipulate the group. And yet, by removing their criticism of America and the reference about his own Jewishness, that is exactly what he did.

There are few things more racist than patronizing condescension.

P.S. Obama National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes is the brother of CBS News president David Rhodes.

 

Follow John Nolte on Twitter@NolteNC               

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National Security, Big Journalism, 2016 Presidential Race, CBS News, Frank Luntz