Negative campaign techniques are finally eating themselves alive with Trump
This is an extremely important recognition by America’s foremost pollster and an architect of modern campaign techniques that have helped to destroy the political process here.
Luntz is the republican son of another great destroyer of productive politics in this country: Lee Atwater.
What is so sweet and also so very disturbing is that the decades of honing attack ad/negative campaigning is finally eating itself…. sadly, with Trump.
The more you go negative the more minimal the impact is! Have these guys gone so far that a sort of dialectical process is now in motion which renders their techniques counter-productive? In any case, and quite possibly for the worse, Luntz et al laid the ground for Trump and now what they get paid for doing – relentless negative campaigning that turns so many off from the process and also treats everyone as essentially stupid – may, may just be passe, or even useless.
From the Washington Post:
“…I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Frank Luntz. “There is no sign of them leaving. He has created or found the magic formula.”
“He” was Donald Trump. “They” were 29 voters from the D.C. metro area who either supported Trump, were considering it, or had once supported Trump and then cooled on the idea. It was not the first Luntz focus group with Trump voters, but over three hours in an Alexandria conference room Wednesday night, he found them hugging their candidate tighter than ever.
The 29 subjects were asked to pick a number between one and 10 to gauge the likelihood that they’d support Trump. At the start of the night, just 10 people said they were at nine or 10. After one hour of mostly negative questions about Trump, 16 said they were that likely to back him. After a barrage of negative ads, the number fell to 15 — and only because an attack on his business record was seen as a potential “killer” in a general election.
But nothing else dented the Republican front-runner. Asked what they liked about Trump, the subjects echoed what he’d said about himself. “He offers things that can’t be bought,” said a middle-aged man named Michael. “He’s not coming from these Monsantos, Kochs or Soros. He doesn’t have any skin he owes to anyone else.”
The Mideastwire Blog 