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Framing is the key to waking up Americans to the real forces behind GOP policies
If Dems don’t figure this out soon 2022 is a loss
In politics, framing is everything, and Democrats must get with the program or 2022 will be a disaster.
Framing is when you define an issue by placing it within a particular context, usually done by careful choice of language.
For example, when the fabulously wealthy multi-billionaire Walton family wanted to reduce the estate tax their heirs would have to cough up, they paid Frank Luntz to come up with new language that would get average Americans to oppose a tax that only affects the tiniest percentage of the very richest Americans.
Luntz famously suggested changing the name from “estate tax” to “death tax,” even though it’s a tax on income given to people who didn’t work for or earn it, but just falls out of the sky when a relative has passed away.
And, sure enough, average Americans listening to wealthy right-wing talk show hosts and multimillionaire Fox News stars ranting about the terrible “death tax” quickly decided they were very, very worried about what used to be the very popular estate tax.
Other Republican frames include “unborn child,” “tax burden,” “religious freedom,” “stifling regulations,” “school choice,” “right to work,” “tax and spend,” and “big government,” among others.
Democrats now have an opportunity to promote their own frames that, over time, could be very effective in waking Americans up to the real forces behind GOP policies.
One of the most effective is to put most everything Republicans do in the frame of “what the billionaires who own them want.”
The simple fact is, the entire Republican party is owned by the right wing billionaire class.
Conservative billionaires and their foundations funded massive national think tanks that crank out policy papers and clutter the Internet with what seem like normal articles but in fact are billionaire-friendly propaganda.
They’ve created a network of state-based think tanks, operating in every single state, to push state-based policies that advantage local billionaires and their industries.
