The agony of the world’s most influential focus group pollster.
The agony of the world’s most influential focus group pollster.
Key paragraphs:
The crisis began, he says, after last year’s presidential election, when Luntz became profoundly depressed. For more than a month, he tried to stay occupied, but nothing could keep his attention. Finally, six weeks after the election, during a meeting of his consulting company in Las Vegas, he fell apart. Leaving his employees behind, he flew back to his mansion in Los Angeles, where he stayed for three weeks, barely going outside or talking to anyone.
“I just gave up,” Luntz says.
His side had lost. Mitt Romney had, in his view, squandered a good chance at victory with a strategically idiotic campaign. (“I didn’t work on the campaign. It just sucked, as a professional. And it killed me because I realized on Election Day that there’s nothing I can do about it.”) But Luntz’s side had lost elections before. His dejection was deeper: It was, he says, about why the election was lost. “I spend more time with voters than anybody else,” Luntz says. “I do more focus groups than anybody else. I do more dial sessions than anybody else. I don’t know s–t about anything, with the exception of what the American people think.”
It was what Luntz heard from the American people that scared him. They were contentious and argumentative. They didn’t listen to each other as they once had. They weren’t interested in hearing other points of view. They were divided one against the other, black vs. white, men vs. women, young vs. old, rich vs. poor. “They want to impose their opinions rather than express them,” is the way he describes what he saw. “And they’re picking up their leads from here in Washington.” Haven’t political disagreements always been contentious, I ask? “Not like this,” he says. “Not like this.” [emphasis mine]
My agony too. One of the most frustrating aspects I experienced while living in liberal havens like New York and Maryland was the inability to find anyone who disagreed with me politically who was also willing to listen to what I had to say. I ain’t a fool. I’m very well educated. I’m also a nice guy who strongly believes in the right of anyone to freely follow their dreams, no matter their race, religion, ethnicity, or political beliefs. But as soon as I would express a conservative opinion I was insulted and shut out, ostracized and blackballed.
The future is not good if this does not change. And there is strong evidence that it is not going to.
And then there’s this: Liberals’ bigoted and ignorant view of conservatives.
Have you ever been pigeon-holed at a party by a liberal? I recommend avoiding it at all costs, but if it happens, go with it. You’ll get an education in what our opponents actually think as he rails, whines and complains about the terrible, inhuman monster that lurks on the fringes of American society.
This scourge is called a “conservative,” and I hope I never meet one in a dark alley. They apparently carry automatic weapons as they stalk the streets, hating science and hunting the poor for sport.
You’ll quickly note how your liberal monologist – they literally never shut up – is a scholar of all things conservative. Of course, he has never actually met one, living as he does in an urban sewer like San Francisco or in a subsidized academic enclave of Marxist fantasy like Berkeley. But who needs experience when you can get convenient bite-sized morsels of pre-processed ideology from MSNBC.
Read it all.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
The agony of the world’s most influential focus group pollster.
Key paragraphs:
The crisis began, he says, after last year’s presidential election, when Luntz became profoundly depressed. For more than a month, he tried to stay occupied, but nothing could keep his attention. Finally, six weeks after the election, during a meeting of his consulting company in Las Vegas, he fell apart. Leaving his employees behind, he flew back to his mansion in Los Angeles, where he stayed for three weeks, barely going outside or talking to anyone.
“I just gave up,” Luntz says.
His side had lost. Mitt Romney had, in his view, squandered a good chance at victory with a strategically idiotic campaign. (“I didn’t work on the campaign. It just sucked, as a professional. And it killed me because I realized on Election Day that there’s nothing I can do about it.”) But Luntz’s side had lost elections before. His dejection was deeper: It was, he says, about why the election was lost. “I spend more time with voters than anybody else,” Luntz says. “I do more focus groups than anybody else. I do more dial sessions than anybody else. I don’t know s–t about anything, with the exception of what the American people think.”
It was what Luntz heard from the American people that scared him. They were contentious and argumentative. They didn’t listen to each other as they once had. They weren’t interested in hearing other points of view. They were divided one against the other, black vs. white, men vs. women, young vs. old, rich vs. poor. “They want to impose their opinions rather than express them,” is the way he describes what he saw. “And they’re picking up their leads from here in Washington.” Haven’t political disagreements always been contentious, I ask? “Not like this,” he says. “Not like this.” [emphasis mine]
My agony too. One of the most frustrating aspects I experienced while living in liberal havens like New York and Maryland was the inability to find anyone who disagreed with me politically who was also willing to listen to what I had to say. I ain’t a fool. I’m very well educated. I’m also a nice guy who strongly believes in the right of anyone to freely follow their dreams, no matter their race, religion, ethnicity, or political beliefs. But as soon as I would express a conservative opinion I was insulted and shut out, ostracized and blackballed.
The future is not good if this does not change. And there is strong evidence that it is not going to.
And then there’s this: Liberals’ bigoted and ignorant view of conservatives.
Have you ever been pigeon-holed at a party by a liberal? I recommend avoiding it at all costs, but if it happens, go with it. You’ll get an education in what our opponents actually think as he rails, whines and complains about the terrible, inhuman monster that lurks on the fringes of American society.
This scourge is called a “conservative,” and I hope I never meet one in a dark alley. They apparently carry automatic weapons as they stalk the streets, hating science and hunting the poor for sport.
You’ll quickly note how your liberal monologist – they literally never shut up – is a scholar of all things conservative. Of course, he has never actually met one, living as he does in an urban sewer like San Francisco or in a subsidized academic enclave of Marxist fantasy like Berkeley. But who needs experience when you can get convenient bite-sized morsels of pre-processed ideology from MSNBC.
Read it all.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
David Mamet, in his book, “The Secret Knowledge,” has much to say about the liberal mindset. This story of his conversation from lib to conservative is well-researched and, of course, beautifully written.
I think that the main stream media and education (controlled by the far left) are the driver of this animosity towards conservatives, it is ok for a conservative to be tolerant of religions, lifestyles and viewpoints, but almost always that tolerance is not returned from the progressives, unless you are gay or Muslim or have a progressive point of view. The progressives have always used class warfare to change the outcomes of elections, using race, education, values, religion, always fighting to bring the conversation leftwards to the point that now elected republicans look very much like hardline democrats. As far as Luntz, I think that much of this last election was a fraud!