Sorry Frank, but the problem with your focus group where the MAGAs and the Dems ended up yelling at each other isn’t that “both sides” don’t want to “learn” anything from the other.
The always useless GOP shill Frank Luntz made an appearance this Friday on CNN’s Erin Burnett OutFront, and they aired some footage of a recent focus group where apparently the discussion descended into a shouting match, which they showed a small portion of:
HILL: Longtime republican pollster Frank Luntz sharing some never before seen video from his focus groups, sharing it with OutFront take a look.
MAN 1: How condescending was Obama? I couldn’t stand to watch that guy. He just looked down on top of everybody! Trump will get down in the dirt and work with you.
MAN 2: So, you want respect, but you have a president who takes on women minorities, everything but White males–
MAN 1: And you know what? He won the election! And he won! And you guys can’t handle that!
[…]
WOMAN: I don’t know why he’s racist. You’d have to ask him… Because he sits up and he says all those Mexicans are rapists and murderers.
[CROSSTALK]
WOMAN: Yes, he did.
MAN 3: He said, “The worst among them. Some of them are rapists.”
WOMAN: You’re asking me what I feel!
Which was immediately followed by Hill and Luntz both bemoaning how terrible it is that we all can’t just get along, with no mention whatsoever what the topics were that were being discussed during the focus group, whether one side had people living in a reality based society and the other being delusional, like the guy making racist comments about Obama and claiming Trump won the election.
No, the only thing that mattered to them is whether heaven forbid, people were polite to each other or not.
HILL: Frank is with me now. So that’s just a, that’s just a small snapshot, right? You shared a fair amount of of video with us. When we look at that you’ve said the country is more divided than ever. I think a lot of people would agree with you, but this video evidence, why? How? Why is it this bad? What are you learning from these groups in these moments?
LUNTZ: That there’s no editing anymore. There’s no censorship, that we now say what we think. We say what we want people to hear rather than trying to learn. To me, it’s not about the mistakes made, it’s about the lessons learned and no-one is trying to learn anything from this. They simply want to be heard and they will shout to be heard.
HILL: They want to be heard. Do they want to listen?
LUNTZ: No, they don’t want to listen. They don’t want to learn. And my issue in this is, children are watching. Our kids are watching this and they’re learning model behavior. There’s a reason why in universities and in schools all across America, more young people are acting out.
There’s more shouting. There’s more aggression and that they see it from the politicians. They see it from Washington DC. They see it in focus groups.
I highly doubt any children are watching Frank Luntz focus groups on CNN, but, if their parents are belligerent Trumpers who are living in some right-wing fantasy land like some of the ones yelling in his focus group, it wouldn’t surprise me to hear they’re abusive parents as well.
This next portion killed me, with Hill and Luntz talking about people behaving badly at school board meetings, with no mention whatsoever that it’s a bunch of right-wing Astroturf groups causing most of the problems there.
HILL: They see it in school board meetings.
LUNTZ: The school boards are the worst!
HILL: Yes!
LUNTZ: Parents go there and they threaten the people on the school board. You have to get cops in there. What is wrong with this country that we’ve gone that far? That’s my question. I keep asking.
Hill also asked Luntz about some focus groups he did with young people, and he again bemoaned the type of answers he got from them on whether our democracy was in danger of failing, again with no context whatsoever as to why.
Luntz has made a career out of teaching Republicans how to dupe their voters with poll-driven messaging, and has enabled the Republican party to stay in power by pretending they care about everyday Americans, when the only constituents they actually care about are the one percent.
The people screaming in the focus group about election denial, carping about that uppity Obama who supposedly didn’t care about working people, compared to that common man Trump, and denying that Trump’s comments about migrants are racists… you built that Frank.
Luntz will get rid of that bad rug before he ever has a come to Jesus moment about the damage he’s inflicted on this country. I don’t expect either to happen any time soon, or ever.
