... from Massachusetts.
Nine months after he penned a memo laying out the arguments for health care legislation's destruction, Republican message guru Frank Luntz has put together a playbook to help derail financial regulatory reform.
In a 17-page memo titled, "The Language of Financial Reform," Luntz urged opponents of reform to frame the final product as filled with bank bailouts, lobbyist loopholes, and additional layers of complicated government bureaucracy.
"If there is one thing we can all agree on, it's that the bad decisions and harmful policies by Washington bureaucrats that in many ways led to the economic crash must never be repeated," Luntz wrote. "This is your critical advantage. Washington's incompetence is the common ground on which you can build support."
Uh huh.
So the bad decisions and harmful practices of Washington bureaucrats were all Democrats?
I think not.
Bankruptcy "reform", that left the common man chained to his debts, while big banks and other corporations use the bankruptcy court as a "get out of debt free" pass issuance device? That was a Republican bill.
Removal of the leverage limits from the investment banks, without which the housing bubble would have been stopped dead in 2004? That was a Republican (Paulson) going to a Republican SEC.
A Department of Justice that sued states to prevent them from enforcing anti-predatory lending laws and those that curbed (or outright banned) stated income and other "liars" products? That was a Republican Administration that did that, at the direction of George W. Bush.
Let's not kid ourselves: The looting is bipartisan and so is the responsibility.
But "killing financial regulatory reform" is one of the dumbest things that The Republicans could ever do.
Let me remind The Republicans that I warned McCain's campaign in 2008 that if they did not take the side of the common man in the TARP "bailout" debate, and instead endorsed it, he would lose.
He did.
Paulson's memoirs essentially admit to threatening McCain to force him to come in line. He knuckled under, thereby proving that he was unfit to hold the Office of President, since the first requirement of being President is that you must have a pair of rocks between your legs - and when the tough choices have to be made they better clank (literally or figuratively.)
But now The Republicans are threatening to completely misread the message of Massachusetts and wind up literally destroyed, where Massachusetts gave them the opportunity to take back The House and Senate, becoming the majority party for the next 20 or more years.
Sadly, The Republicans learned nothing from the message in these special elections, of which Massachusetts was just the last. These folks seem to think that the people will tolerate the bankster bailouts, bankster bonuses and the raw theft and scams embedded through our so-called "financial system" - and that the system will both remain stable and not collapse anew if they do not fix it.
They're wrong, and if they listen to Mr. Luntz they're writing their own political obituary.
