An early death and a short trip to hell, hopefully. RT @politicalwire: What's Next for Frank Luntz? http://t.co/J5VbDBH4PO
— billmon (@billmon1) January 6, 2014
What kind of moron moves to Las Vegas to be "intellectually challenged"? Wait, I know the answer: http://t.co/00Z7S1ORq8
— billmon (@billmon1) January 6, 2014
On the other hand, I can SO see Frank Luntz hanging in the lizard lounge with the other lizards. pic.twitter.com/owtyc5y0s6
— billmon (@billmon1) January 6, 2014
Frank Luntz is a professional liar who’s been cheerfully ratfvcking for the GOP since Pat Buchanan’s last presidential run. Molly Ball (whose stuff is always worth reading) wrote a wonderful tiny-violins piece about him for the Atlantic, and I’m sure it was a genuine consolation to Frank Luntz:
… Frank Luntz, the master political manipulator, a man who has always evinced a cheery certainty about who’s right and who’s winning and how it all works, is a mess.
And yet, over the hour and a half I spend talking with him—the first time he has spoken publicly about his current state of mind—it’s hard to grasp what the crisis is about. Luntz hasn’t renounced his conservative worldview. His belief in unfettered capitalism and individual self-reliance appears stronger than ever. He hasn’t become disillusioned with his very profitable career or his nomadic, solitary lifestyle. His complaints—that America is too divided, President Obama too partisan, and the country in the grip of an entitlement mentality that is out of control—seem pretty run-of-the-mill. But his anguish is too deeply felt not to be real. Frank Luntz is having some kind of crisis. I just can’t quite get my head around it.
A few weeks after our lunch, Luntz tells me he’s made a move. He has changed his principal residence from Northern Virginia to a condo overlooking the Las Vegas Strip, and he’s contemplating a sale of his company, Luntz Global LLC, the details of which he is not at liberty to discuss. Las Vegas, he says, represents “my chance to be intellectually challenged again” by a place that is “the closest thing to a melting pot America has to offer.” As fresh starts go, it’s not much, but Luntz hopes it will bring some new clarity….
Because I’m a cynic, my first impulse was to assume Luntz had been caught servicing a live goat or a dead human, but that would imply carnal impulses of which I’m not sure Luntz is capable. Probably he’s just about to roll out some new iteration of ‘words don’t have meanings, they just have effects‘ for the One Percenters.
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Apart from schadenfreude, what’s on the agenda for the evening?
Monday Evening Open Thread: “The Agony of Frank Luntz”Post + Comments (135)