Word Wars: The Koch is coming with its "wordsmiths"

[Cosmic Kitten]

The right-wing understands that WORDS MATTER.
The Kochtopus is spending million$$$ on wordsmithing
to persuade and capture the narrative this upcoming election.
This round its about: taxes, deregulation, energy, women and Latinos...

How Populists respond will/can make a difference.
Do we respond to their frames?
Do we create alternate frames?
Do we deconstruct their frames exposing the manipulation?

...the Koch network—and the GOP generally—capitalized on public dissatisfaction with President Obama, the "six-year itch" most two-term presidents face, and a bad electoral landscape for Democratic Senate candidates. But the Kochs and their allies also learned from their past mistakes. They've used the last two years to adapt, refine, and expand their operations with an eye to sharpening their anti-big-government messages to appeal to more voters. The Koch network, one donor told me, has been laser-focused on "trying to perfect their language." For help, they have turned to an A-list of conservative political consultants, including the man best known for selling the nation on Newt Gingrich's Contract With America: pollster and spinmeister Frank Luntz.

Luntz cut his teeth in the early 1990s as a pollster for Pat Buchanan and Ross Perot, but he became a household name later in the decade, when he advised Republicans to "talk like Newt" by describing Democrats with terms like "corrupt," "devour," "greed," "hypocrisy," "liberal," "sick," and "traitors."

<snip>

After the 2012 drubbing, the network spent several months doing a postmortem analysis, even postponing its traditional winter policy and fundraising seminar until the following April. In an invitation to the spring gathering, Koch fundraising honcho Kevin Gentry stressed the need for a few fixes, two of which focused on messaging and marketing.

One top priority: crafting the right messages to woo major voting blocs, such as Latinos, women, and youth, who favored Obama by wide margins. The Koch network should zero in on how "to more effectively communicate to these growing demographics, all of which play a critical role in advancing free enterprise," Gentry wrote.

Mobilizing these and other major constituencies required "understanding key customer segments," Gentry wrote, "and more importantly the issues that matter to them." The Koch network had to do a better job of locating and training "principled and effective advocates for free enterprise"

<snip>

This year, Koch operatives repeatedly stressed the vital role of good messaging in selling their anti-tax, anti-regulatory agenda. An internal memo sent to donors to Americans for Prosperity, the Kochs political flagship, and obtained by Politico bemoaned that in 2012, "The Left had a superior messaging strategy."

The brothers' longtime senior adviser, Rich Fink, also sent an email to the donor network emphasizing the need for "developing the message and educating people," according to a donor familiar with it. And in a conference call with network donors, Fink stressed similar points. The network would ratchet up its message testing, while reassuring its high-dollar backers on conference calls by discussing focus groups and polls.

<snip>

Focus groups, he told National Review, showed that emotional appeals worked better than ideological ones, and that women were more effective anti-Obamacare spokespeople than men. "Women are more focused on quality of life and peace of mind," he said. Sure enough, in this past election cycle Americans for Prosperity spent at least $50 million on a big ad blitz attacking Democrats in tight races, often featuring women talking about problems they claim to have encountered with Obamacare.

<snip>

As one veteran operative put it: "The Koch network was very sensitive to make sure that the messages and the messengers resonated with women voters."
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/12/frank-luntz-helped-the-koch-brothers

That's it Populists, it's Word Wars.
Facts don't persuade, ideology won't win...
EMOTIONS are what sway the public...
Hearts & Minds