Luntz: This should have been a 'slam dunk for the GOP'

[DonViejo]

Republican strategist Frank Luntz on Sunday criticized Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump's campaign, saying this election "should have been a slam dunk for the GOP." Luntz said on CBS's "Face the Nation" that Trump's campaign has been focused on the billionaire and his battles with "just about everybody."

"If he had stayed the voice and the vision for those people who have been left behind, this race would be a lot different than it is right now," he said. Still, Luntz said he doesn't think the race is over.

He said there are enough people who are still undecided and noted Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton is under 50 percent support in many polls. "But it requires a level of discipline that the Trump campaign has not had," he said. "This is about the voice of the voters, not the voice of Donald Trump."

Luntz continued to criticize the Trump campaign. He said he has never seen a campaign with "less discipline" or "less focus."

###

http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/302400-luntz-this-should-have-been-slam-dunk-for-the-gop

[JNelson6563]

2. Many tears for asswipe Luntz on election nite.

[Foggyhill]

3. Right... Now they pivot to saying its the candidate not the damn GOP and its racism and misoginy.

Trump is your fucking party dumbass, that's what you are. Live with it.

[BlueCaliDem]

30. ^^^This!^^^ k&r eom

[Lucinda]

4. Nonsense. It would have been a huge uphill climb for anyone they nominated.

This sounds like a nice way to dump all the blame on Trumpy. Not that he doesn't own his loss outright, but the GOP created this monster.

[underpants]

5. For a supposed expert Luntz has no clue about assessing the product

He is projecting normalcy onto to Trump. He fails, as many do, to realize WHAT the product is. Luntz's product relies on there being a horse race and that he can have any effect on it. Neither has been the case for a while.




He, a supposed expert, ignores that any Dem nominee starts with at least 210 electoral college votes - actually more reasonably with 246.

[LuvLoogie]

6. Fuck Luntz. The GOP has been blowing his dog whistles for years.

Trump is the bitch you've been calling, ass wipe.

[Quixote1818]

7. You can't teach and old DOG new tricks. Trump is set in his ways and getting him to change now

is virtually impossible. He is not built for politics or public service.

[Generic Brad]

8. Then the leaves them with only one possible course of action

They must turn even harder to the right in their estimation. The massive losses will be lain at Trump's feet and the party that never takes responsibility for its own failures will do so again. They will become more bigoted and hateful than they are now. At some point (and it will not be within the next two cycles) they will come to realize that they need to give their basket of deplorables the heave ho. Until then, they are the deplorables.

[manicraven]

10. They're already spinning to pin their disaster all on Trump...

"If he had stayed the voice and the vision for those people who have been left behind"

The only way many of the Trumpsters were left behind is in accepting change and in being decent human beings! From WaPo's article, "Five Thirty Eight's Nate Silver has estimated that the average household income among Trump supporters is $72,000 a year, well above the national median." I heard another report that the median income is in the high $60,000 range, but I'm not sure of the source. In any case, there's some real mythology out there.

I'm sure there are people in both parties who are struggling, but the real reason for Trump's popularity with the GOP base is his racism and bigotry. It appeals to those who want to "Make America White Again," including but not limited to the KKK and the white supremacists. The GOP just continues to double down on alienating minorities and women,and they are too dumb to get it! Their policies are a joke, too, and don't work either, and they stubbornly continue to deny climate change, among other things. Trump is only the front man for a whole party of ignorance and rot.

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-mythology-of-trumps-working-class-support

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/05/13/what-we-mean-when-we-say-donald-trumps-supporters-are-struggling

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2016/05/05/donald-trump-average-voter-income-72000-middle-class/83972800/

[Achilleaze]

19. "...those people who have been left behind..."

Those are all the people that Trump and the Republicans have lied to, manipulated, and stiffed: the American taxpayers who have been suckered into honestly paying taxes so that Corporate Welfare Wankers like Comrade Trump & allied ScrewDaddies (R) can skate along for free at public expense.

[Thrill]

11. How often is a candidate going to get

50% when there is a 4 person race

[geek tragedy]

12. Luntz's focus groups showed Trump crushing it in last two debates.

Maybe he's not that good at this.

P.S. Hillary would have beat Jeb

[Cha]

21. Or pence or cruz

[pnwmom]

13. The GOP has always underestimated the Clintons. They still are. n/t

[Squinch]

15. Such bullshit. She would have beat the crap out of anyone they put up against her.

She has had to overcome magnitudes more hurdles than ANYONE who has ever run against her, and ANY of the guys who ran in the Republican primary, and yet everyone is always so sure that she is a terrible candidate and easy to beat.

And yet, here she is about to run away with a historic victory.

[Mr. Ected]

16. Trump never deviated from his message

There was not one moment in this campaign that he showed an ounce of discipline or focus.

Trump is the product of a populist movement fomented by decades of hate radio and relentless media propaganda.

[oswaldactedalone]

18. Exactly

Well said.

[VOX]

24. In a nutshell -- 100% correct! n/t

[Quantess]

20. Some people lose their appetite under stress, some people binge-eat junk food when stressed.

I'm guessing the latter is true for Frank Luntz.

[Cha]

22. Ha, so says frank luntz. Would Shoulda Coulda, luntz..

I say Hillary would still win even if the geniuses in the repub party hadn't nominated an admitted sexual predator.

[DFW]

23. Luntz is no idiot (he plays one at times) and he knows exactly what he's doing here

You're a Republican propagandist posing as a "pollster," paid for twisting words to the advantage of those who pay highest (Republicans) for the best slogans whispered in the right ears, so they get repeated as gospel by the masses of the faithful.

It's obvious the faithful got led by the wayside this time. Fox Noise and National Hate Radio finally bore fruit and their love child this time is Rosemary's baby. Oops. With someone more pliable and less offensive, someone who follows his script, he might have given Hillary a run for her money. Maybe. Don't forget, I have been in a setting where Hillary was doing a rather intimate Q&A, and Luntz was one of the Q's (mine was first, so ha-ha!). He thought he would be funny, and actually went up to the stage and kneeled at Hillary's feet, but it wasn't as much of an act as he was leading us to believe. Hillary had already survived every onslaught he and his pals had thrown at her for over a decade, and she was still going strong while he was still playing Uriah Heep. His respect for his political enemy was genuine.

Anyway, Luntz has made himself a fortune by being a Republican propagandist, and he isn't going to get any richer (being a Republican, that's pretty much all he wants out of life) if half his clientele gets voted out of office. A JEB or a Kasich would be drawing on the RNC substantial pool of donor money to pay Luntz handsomely for his services. Luntz is only too happy to confirm to them that his services are needed. In the case of a nominee named JEB or Kasich, he probably would have been right. But in the case of nominee Trump, Luntz probably hasn't seen a cent of business from his party's nominee. You aren't going to finance your new Silver Shadow that way. Luntz wants his old clientele back running, because with them, he'll be asked to help with "discipline and focus." Trump knows the meaning of neither, and therefore certainly isn't going to be paying Luntz to find out. So Luntz gets his per-performance pocket money from Fox and may even have to draw down from the tens of millions he has already banked from his Republican patrons.

Ergo, Luntz will say everything he can to make sure the RNC and their candidates know that Trump's disaster might have been prevented had they only enlisted the expertise of one Frank Luntz. That way, he preserves his brand while watching his party go down in flames this cycle. This way, he can say "had they only listened to me," without anyone being able to contradict him. His brand stays intact, and his services will be in demand next time around. Actually, this time, seeing how Trump does business, he probably wouldn't have collected enough to buy a Big Mac, even if Trump had hired him and won.

[yellowcanine]

26. Republicans are in denial that their problems go well beyond Trump.

As long as Luntz et al. keep pushing the hypothetical that all would be sweetness and light for them if only they had nominated a different candidate they will continue to lose nationally. Demographics are working against Republicans long term and they have not done anything since 2008 to reverse that. If they use Trump as an excuse for their defeat and do not address the question as to why Trump was the nominee in the first place they will have learned nothing from this election.

[Skidmore]

27. GOP has run out of words to

describe turning crap into fool's gold.

[tinrobot]

28. I see they are already trotting out the narrative for the next few years.

"She didn't really win because Trump was a bad candidate, therefore we have the mandate"

These people are insufferable.

[BeyondGeography]

29. Cuz they're for the little guy

Spare me.

[unblock]

31. except that it turns out people actually like hillary.

when all they hear is the non-stop smears, yeah, hillary's image takes a beating.

then people hear hillary and remember, oh yeah, we like her!

if republicans treated her like a normal politician, she'd be very popular -- and they've known this for ages, which is why they started smearing her a quarter century ago.... and it still wasn't enough!