Word: gop
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Politicians in Washington often speak with their own vocabulary. If they're Republicans, Frank Luntz helped write their dictionary. The influential GOP pollster and language guru has had a hand in framing the party's message since 1994's Contract with America, persuading Republicans to drop terms like "estate tax" and "oil drilling" in favor of the far more message-friendly "death tax" and "energy exploration" among other rebrandings. His latest project: the health-care debate. Relying on polling and "instant response dial sessions," Luntz penned a 28-page memo, leaked to Politico, giving Republicans the soundbites designed to spin...
...Leave Obama out of it. Though he doesn't say so directly, Luntz makes clear that the President's popularity is too much for the GOP to counter right now. So better to frame the health care fight as a battle between Republicans and Democrats, or, better still, Americans and politicians. "If you make this debate about Republicans vs. Obama, you lose...
...district, then Senator Arlen Specter. Polls suggest that only one-fourth of the electorate considers itself Republican, that independents are trending Democratic and that as few as five states have solid Republican pluralities. And the electorate is getting less white, less rural, less Christian - in short, less demographically Republican. GOP officials who completely controlled Washington three years ago are vowing to "regain our status as a national party" and creating woe-is-us groups to resuscitate their brand, while Democrats are publishing books like The Strange Death of Republican America and 40 More Years: How the Democrats Will Rule...
...Democratic critiques of the GOP - that it's the Party of No, or No Ideas - are not helpful either. It's silly to fault an opposition party for opposition; obstructionism helped return Democrats to power. Republicans actually have plenty of ideas...
...Some conservatives think that in the long run, the party will be better off without squishes like Specter muddling the coherence of its brand; a GOP campaign committee celebrated his departure with an e-mail headlined "Good riddance," and Limbaugh urged him to take McCain along. Inside this echo chamber, a center-right nation punished Republicans for abandoning their principles, for enabling Bush's spending sprees, for insufficient conservatism. South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford, who has refused to accept $700 million in stimulus cash for his state despite bitter opposition from his GOP-dominated legislature, argues that Chick...