Frank Luntz knows how to make GOP candidates cry

Newt Gingrich getting emotional during a town hall meeting in Des Moines last month. (C-SPAN)

Is Frank Luntz the Oprah of the 2012 GOP primary?

On Monday, moderating a forum in Myrtle Beach, S.C., the Republican strategist asked Rick Santorum’s wife how the candidate “dealt with the challenges” when their toddler daughter was born with a life-threatening ailment. Karen Santorum’s voice was cracking from the start. “It was a really hard time,” she said, sniffling. Seconds later, she was wiping tears. (see video, below)

Frank Luntz. (Neilson Barnard/Getty Images)

A few weeks earlier, in Des Moines, it was Newt Gingrich. Luntz asked about his late mother: “What special moment comes to mind?” Gingrich swallowed hard and dabbed his cheek, recalling how his mom made him sing in the choir. In later years, he explained, she suffered from mental illness.

“My emphasis on brain sciences comes directly from. . .” His face crumpled in a suppressed sob. “See, I’m getting all emotional!”

“I apologize,” Luntz said. “I did not mean to put you through that.” (see video, below)

Yeah, right. The veteran messaging maven acknowledged to us Thursday that he’s got a knack for making the pols cry. Amid debates that he finds too policy-focused, “my job is to show the personal side of these candidates, and I’ve succeeded.”

Karen Santorum drying her eyes during a Luntz-moderated forum in Myrtle Beach on Monday. (C-SPAN)

He got Rick Perry weepy by asking what America and his wife mean to him. In a November forum, Luntz asked Herman Cain about a time he’d faced a challenge; Cain choked up recalling his cancer diagnosis. On the same stage, Rick Santorum melted when Luntz brought up his daughter’s illness. He hasn’t jerked tears from Mitt Romney or Ron Paul — but they haven’t sat for a Luntz forum yet. (He’d love to ask Romney about his wife’s MS battle and Paul about his son winning a Senate seat.)

What’s the trick? The question must focus on the candidate’s personal life, Luntz told us, “but it has to be completely unexpected. They’re used to getting abused in these debates. I take exactly the opposite approach.”

What would make Frank Luntz cry? A question about his parents: “My mother and father would be so proud if they were around now.” His mother, who has Alzheimer’s disease, would nag him about his shirttail sticking out, and his father — who died on the eve of the ’96 Iowa caucuses, the same day his boy made the front page of the Boston Globe — would have asked the candidates why they’re letting Frank badger them so.

Are you crying now, Frank? No, but only because he already answered that question for an intern. “As I was explaining to him, I got emotional.”

Read earlier: Frank Luntz and his Twitter imposter, 3/24/09

Frank Luntz leaves Washington for California, 7/17/08

View the original article here

On Tea Party Patriots call, three GOP candidates make their pitch

Whither the Florida tea party vote?

That is the question. And we may not know the answer until Tuesday’s Sunshine State primary.

Former senator Rick Santorum (Pa.), former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney and former House speaker Newt Gingrich (Ga.). (David Goldman/Associated Press)Three of the top GOP presidential contenders — former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, former House speaker Newt Gingrich (Ga.) and former senator Rick Santorum (Pa.) — made their pitches Sunday night in a conference call with nearly 6,000 Florida tea party activists.

During the call, organized by the national Tea Party Patriots group, each of the three White House hopefuls had about 10 minutes to field pre-screened questions from tea party activists and then make a brief closing statement. (A fourth candidate, Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, was unable to participate because of a previous engagement, Tea Party Patriots Co-Founder Jenny Beth Martin said.)

The three contenders made their cases for lower spending, arguing that the $1.047 trillion limit set by the August debt deal for fiscal 2013 is unacceptable. (That might come as news to the congressional GOP leaders who negotiated the deal.)

“I would go in and start by looking through how much could we save, how much could we cut immediately,” Gingrich, who was the first candidate to speak on the call, told the activists.

He argued that he would reduce spending on a number of federal agencies. And he used a fair share of his allotted time to take aim at Romney, who will be his main rival in Florida’s primary on Tuesday, calling the former governor “a Massachusetts liberal who was for abortion, for tax increases, for gun control.”

It would be “truly sad” if Florida sent Romney to the Republican National Convention with its delegates, Gingrich added.

Up next was Romney, who told callers that the federal spending level “has to be lowered by the end of my first fiscal year.”

He said he would limit non-security discretionary spending to 2008 levels and would cut funding to the National Endowment for the Arts, PBS and Amtrak, as well as achieve a balanced federal budget by his second term in office.

Romney mentioned his personal life — noting that he has “been married to Ann for 42 years” — and said he has been “true to the things I believe in.”

By contrast, he argued, under Gingrich’s speakership, “government grew faster than inflation all four years he was in office.”

“I’ve got a record of cutting government I don’t think anyone else can match in this race,” he said.

The final speaker was Santorum, who told callers that he was dialing in from the hospital room of his daughter Bella.

“I would begin cutting immediately,” he said when asked about the federal budget. He pledged to trim $5 trillion over five years — a sizable amount, given that Congress was able to agree this summer on cutting only about $2 trillion in federal spending over the next 10 years.

Santorum said the federal government would “spend less money every year over four years” until he was able to limit federal spending to 18 percent of gross domestic product, down from the current 25 percent.

So whom will Florida’s tea party backers vote for, and what role will they play in Tuesday’s primary?

A look at recent shows indicates that they could play a significant role — although perhaps they will not be as great a factor as they were in Iowa and South Carolina.

An NBC News/Marist poll conducted on Wednesday and Thursday found that 48 percent of potential Florida GOP primary voters said they support or strongly support the tea party, while 43 percent do not support it and 9 percent are unsure.

That’s fewer than the 64 percent of South Carolina and Iowa Republican primary voters who backed the tea party, according to exit polls earlier this month.

But it’s nearly even with the 51 percent of New Hampshire voters who supported the tea party in the Granite State’s Jan. 10 GOP primary.

Notably, tea party supporters in each of the three states chose that state’s eventual winner: Santorum won tea party supporters on Jan. 3 in Iowa, with 29 percent; Romney won them in New Hampshire, with 41 percent; and Gingrich won them in South Carolina, with 45 percent.

Looking at recent Florida polls, it appears to be a tight race between Gingrich and Romney among tea party backers heading into Tuesday’s primary.

The NBC News/Marist poll showed Gingrich taking 36 percent among tea party supporters to Romney’s 34 percent. Santorum takes 22 percent while Paul takes 6 percent.

If Romney wins on Tuesday — as it looks as though he’s poised to do — and does not pick up the support of a plurality of tea party supporters, that would mean Florida would be the first primary state thus far in which the eventual winner has not won the greatest share among tea party supporters.

What would that mean for the greater GOP race — as well as for the tea party’s future? We’d like to know your thoughts; the comments section is open for business.

View the original article here

Frank Luntz knows how to make GOP candidates cry

Newt Gingrich getting emotional during a town hall meeting in Des Moines last month. (C-SPAN)

Is Frank Luntz the Oprah of the 2012 GOP primary?

On Monday, moderating a forum in Myrtle Beach, S.C., the Republican strategist asked Rick Santorum’s wife how the candidate “dealt with the challenges” when their toddler daughter was born with a life-threatening ailment. Karen Santorum’s voice was cracking from the start. “It was a really hard time,” she said, sniffling. Seconds later, she was wiping tears. (see video, below)

Frank Luntz. (Neilson Barnard/Getty Images)

A few weeks earlier, in Des Moines, it was Newt Gingrich. Luntz asked about his late mother: “What special moment comes to mind?” Gingrich swallowed hard and dabbed his cheek, recalling how his mom made him sing in the choir. In later years, he explained, she suffered from mental illness.

“My emphasis on brain sciences comes directly from. . .” His face crumpled in a suppressed sob. “See, I’m getting all emotional!”

“I apologize,” Luntz said. “I did not mean to put you through that.” (see video, below)

Yeah, right. The veteran messaging maven acknowledged to us Thursday that he’s got a knack for making the pols cry. Amid debates that he finds too policy-focused, “my job is to show the personal side of these candidates, and I’ve succeeded.”

Karen Santorum drying her eyes during a Luntz-moderated forum in Myrtle Beach on Monday. (C-SPAN)

He got Rick Perry weepy by asking what America and his wife mean to him. In a November forum, Luntz asked Herman Cain about a time he’d faced a challenge; Cain choked up recalling his cancer diagnosis. On the same stage, Rick Santorum melted when Luntz brought up his daughter’s illness. He hasn’t jerked tears from Mitt Romney or Ron Paul — but they haven’t sat for a Luntz forum yet. (He’d love to ask Romney about his wife’s MS battle and Paul about his son winning a Senate seat.)

What’s the trick? The question must focus on the candidate’s personal life, Luntz told us, “but it has to be completely unexpected. They’re used to getting abused in these debates. I take exactly the opposite approach.”

What would make Frank Luntz cry? A question about his parents: “My mother and father would be so proud if they were around now.” His mother, who has Alzheimer’s disease, would nag him about his shirttail sticking out, and his father — who died on the eve of the ’96 Iowa caucuses, the same day his boy made the front page of the Boston Globe — would have asked the candidates why they’re letting Frank badger them so.

Are you crying now, Frank? No, but only because he already answered that question for an intern. “As I was explaining to him, I got emotional.”

Read earlier: Frank Luntz and his Twitter imposter, 3/24/09

Frank Luntz leaves Washington for California, 7/17/08

View the original article here

Republican candidates are glum and glummer

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Republican candidates are glum and glummerView Photo Gallery — ?In December, the GOP presidential candidates turned their attention to Iowa and saw the field grow smaller as one candidate suspended his campaign.

Text SizePrintE-mailReprints By Melinda Henneberger,

Have you ever seen a glummer or grouchier bunch of presidential aspirants than the current GOP crop? You’d be working those frown lines, too, I guess, if you thought, as Rick Santorum does, that this year’s race will decide “whether we will be a free people.” Or believed, as Michele Bachmann told Sean Hannity on Monday, that Iran might go nuclear before Inauguration Day.

Of course, Ron Paul is as cataclysmic as ever — promising prunes for everybody if he’s elected: When he puts the federal budget on a trillion-dollar diet, “people say everybody will suffer,” he tells supporters. But “they should have to suffer.” Perhaps it’s understandable, as The Washington Post’s Nia-Malika Henderson wrote this week, that Paul’s apocalyptic message is newly popular in a country exhausted by years of war and financial struggle. On Tuesday, Paul practically dared Iowans to throw away their caucus-night votes, admitting that even he doesn’t see himself as president. You know a guy is hard to please when he’s down on Abraham Lincoln. (Abe dragged us into a “senseless war,” in Paul’s view, and ruled with an “iron fist.”)

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But Paul isn’t the only candidate hawking “midnight in America.” The notion that the sunniest guy always wins probably will still hold true — but the fact that charisma-challenged Mitt Romney is that guy threatens the cliche that voters go for the candidate with whom they’d most like to have a beer, or at least can stand to watch on TV without having to lower the volume.

Santorum spent months trying to guilt Iowans into supporting him. Not without reason, he seemed aggrieved during candidate debates, using some of his precious airtime to complain about receiving no airtime. In interviews, he grumbled about not being interviewed. He’s right that Iowa voters have known for some time that he is more conservative than Romney and more accomplished than Bachmann or Rick Perry, yet he wasn’t their first choice, or their second.

“I was the skunk at the garden party,’’ he says of his time in Washington, on account of his opposition to abortion rights. He frequently uses martyrdom language, saying he has bullet scars to show for his battles on behalf of conservative principles. This “too pure to win on the world’s terms” ethos is deeply ingrained in conservative culture, not to speak of Catholicism. But martyrs do not get invited out a lot; now that Santorum is on top, will he be able to adjust?

In the last day alone, he called Paul “disgusting,” and Newt “Keepin’ It Positive” Gingrich called Romney a “liar.” This joylessness is catching, too; a Perry ad likening Santorum’s behavior to that of a pig at a trough riled even the the unflappable Greta van Susteren. On Monday, the Fox News Channel personality told Perry pointedly: “That’s very curious you say your friend Rick Santorum. .?.?. One of the things your friend Rick Santorum has gotten is an ad from your campaign that’s headlined ‘Why are the pigs so happy?’ I don’t make references to pigs about friends.” (Perry’s attempt to pretend this was a compliment was funny, though: “In Iowa they love pigs,’’ he insisted.)

Gingrich, who has a long history of bomb-throwing and umbrage-taking, had pledged to stick to the high road but rethought that strategy after being bashed by a bunch of negative ads; when his head stopped spinning, he whined that Romney ought to call off the PACs with which he is not allowed to communicate. For good measure, he called his rival a big ol’ faker who has replaced the “real Mitt’’ with “a poll-driven, consultant-guided version that goes around with talking points.’’

(Unlike Perry, Romney didn’t give a “Who, me?” response, but laughed and said welcome to politics. Also welcome to life after the Supreme Court decision named after Citizens United, the outfit that produced Gingrich’s John Paul II movie.)

Both Santorum and Gingrich have cried in public recently — Santorum when discussing his newborn son Gabriel, who survived only hours in 1996, and his 3-year-old daughter, Bella, who has the genetic disorder Trisomy 18; and Gingrich when speaking about his late mother, who he said suffered from bipolar disease and depression.

This year, those candidates who do have a more traditionally upbeat presidential demeanor have gone nowhere or have been to the mountaintop and fallen off; Jon Huntsman never caught on, Perry came off as hapless, and Herman Cain proved that sunny only goes so far.

Not just the American but the global economy has been through one crisis after another in recent years, and the “hope and change” message that resonated in ’08 wouldn’t have the same power today, no matter who presided over the past few years.

But as angry as voters are, and as much as they say they want to be leveled with, they still want reassurance in a leader, too. The Republican nominee, whoever he or he is, will not win independent votes with surliness and name-calling; that’s what Super PACs are for.

She the People is a new Post blog written from a woman’s perspective. It is anchored by political reporter Melinda Henneberger, founder of Politics Daily and its Woman Up blog.

More from PostPolitics and She the People:

Santorum hopes to build on his strong finish in Iowa

The dark side of Mitt Romney’s close finish in Iowa

Disenfranchised in Des Moines: who gets left out of the Iowa caucuses?

Are Iowa caucuses a harbinger of the super-PAC era?

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GOP candidates’ ad spending down, but anti-Obama groups take to airwaves early

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Influence IndustryDan Eggen & T.W. FarnamGOP candidates’ ad spending down, but anti-Obama groups take to airwaves earlyText SizePrintE-mailReprints By T.W. Farnam,

The presidential primaries are only now just about to start, but conservatives investing money in politics have already bet their capital on the biggest return: defeating President Obama in the general election.

The shifting Republican nomination fight has been cheaper than a post-holiday sale compared with the 2008 race, but groups mobilizing against Obama are starting earlier than similar groups have in the past.

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Spending on television advertising, traditionally the largest campaign expense by far, is dramatically lower than four years ago. In 2007, Republican candidates spent $33 million on television ads, according to estimates of ad spending created by Kantar Media. Democrats spent $40 million in 2007.

Kantar’s data show that all the Republicans in this year’s race, and the groups supporting them, had spent a combined $8 million through Monday — about a quarter of GOP spending in 2007.

While primary campaign spending is down, interest groups focused on defeating Obama are spending much earlier than the liberals who targeted President George W. Bush ahead of the 2004 election.

Republican groups with an eye toward capturing the White House have already spent more than $18 million on ads attacking Obama — more than twice as much as the entire GOP field. In the 2004 election cycle, the biggest liberal interest groups attacking Bush didn’t start spending on ads until March of the election year.

Karl Rove, a former Bush political adviser, emphasized the general election in a recent Web video for the conservative interest group American Crossroads, the biggest spender against Obama. Rove is helping run the group.

“We say it every election, but this time it’s true: 2012 is the most important election in 100 years, and I don’t say that lightly,” Rove says in the video. “We got a far more liberal, far more ideological president than we could have ever imagined. .?.?. We’ve got to fight to save our country.”

Even primary ads are heavily focused on Obama’s tenure. Data from Kantar show that almost half of the money spent was on ads pushing an anti-Obama message, making it the second-biggest issue tracked in the data after jobs.

There are a number of reasons for the low spending. An extremely fluid GOP race has meant that leading candidates have had little time to raise money before fading to the sidelines. And a big focus on the lively — and widely watched — debates means that campaigns haven’t needed to run a large number of ads to get their message out.

Mitt Romney is the only candidate who consistently has been at or near the top of the group. Given his prominence in the 2008 primary season, Romney hasn’t needed to reintroduce himself to voters. He also hasn’t started using his personal fortune as he did in his first bid. Romney spent $22 million on ads in 2007, according to Kantar’s data, compared with less than $1 million this year.

The Nelson bet

Senate Democrats lost a $1.8 million bet this week.

That’s how much the party has invested in ads boosting Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) this year. The party’s move was seen as an attempt to convince Nelson that he would be able to win reelection in the deep-red state.

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee transferred $1.4 million to the Nebraska party, which used the money to produce and air ads featuring Nelson talking about his accomplishments. The Senate Democrats’ super PAC, called Majority PAC, spent an additional $400,000 backing him.

“Republicans will continue to have their hands full with a very divisive primary in the state,” said Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), chairwoman of the DSCC. “We remain confident that we will hold the majority next year.”

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