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Frank Luntz hired by Washington football team to convince people name isn’t horribly racist

Wed, 12 Jun 2013 14:00:00 +0000

The Washington, D.C.-area NFL franchise has commissioned veteran Republican pollster Frank Luntz to conduct some focus groups to see how American football fans feel about the franchise's name, which is a vile racial slur.

Luntz has also previously consulted for the NFL on matters related to the ongoing lawsuit 4,000 former players filed against the league relating to concussions, and has appeared on ESPN representing the league, but in this case he appears to be working just for the team in question, with the disgusting and offensive name. That team, named after a wildly derogatory name for American Indians, has received a great deal of criticism for its name recently, including a trademark lawsuit and a letter from 10 members of Congress urging a change.

Frank Luntz: “I don’t think the NRA is listening”

Wed, 26 Dec 2012 15:38:00 +0000

On "CBS This Morning," GOP pollster Frank Luntz said "I don’t think the NRA is listening" to Americans on gun control.

“The public wants guns out of the schools, not in the schools,” he said. “And they're not asking for a security official or someone else. I don’t think the NRA is listening. I don’t think they understand most Americans would protect the Second Amendment rights and yet agree with the idea that not every human being should own a gun, not every gun should be available at any time, anywhere, for anyone."

Watch:

Stay classy, Frank Luntz

Wed, 24 Oct 2012 19:56:00 +0000

The official pollster of Fox News, Frank Luntz, is the man who renamed the estate tax the "death tax" and told Republicans to lie and call healthcare reform a "government takeover" of the medical system. It turns out he's also the guy who tested anti-Obama films, including one that features photoshopped "nude" photos of President Obama's mother and depicts her as possibly a prostitute, for a shadowy GOP donor. Now DVDs of the scurrilous film, "Dreams from My Real Father," are finding their way into mailboxes in swing states.

(Update: Somehow I missed that he had been hired by CBS News in September to do election analysis.)

Luntz won't say who commissioned his anti-Obama focus group, and he reportedly counseled his client to go with a milder anti-Obama film by conservative Stephen K. Bannon. That's showing up on cable television stations in swing states soon. Another film screened was Dinesh D'Souza's fantasy "Obama: 2016," which Luntz said didn't test well with voters.