Frank Luntz Quotes
While the new GOP House majority is the second-largest since World War II, more people cast votes for Democratic House candidates than for Republican candidates.
This seeming abnormality was the result of most of the House of Representatives Congressional Districts being heavily weighted to one party or the other, some the result of demographics and most the result of intentional gerrymandering by the politicians in the State Legislatures. The Republicans at that time were much better at this than the Democrats and very few of the districts were competitive between the parties. Many Democratic urban districts had small democratic areas of the suburbs added to them giving them a larger majority than they needed to win while taking them out of the suburban districts making them easier to win for the Republicans. The original Constitutional concept that the House represented the people proportionately was then undermined as the Republicans could easily win the vast majority of the congressional seats and at the some tome garner millions of votes less nationally than the Democrats,
Frank Luntz, Republican Pollster & Campaign Strategist, “Watch Your Language, Republicans”, Washington Post - January 13, 2013
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This was the result of Gerrymandering over the last decade where the Republicans outmaneuvered the Democrats in enough states so that they could control the House even of the Democrats had a large majority of the votes for congress members. See {632784} for an explanation of Gerrymandering technique.
Owner of one of the only 2 Mexican Television Networks. There js no other industrial democracy that has a two party system; the others have 3 or more parties. Other democracies have their election day scheduled for a non-work day—usually a weekend. A number of states of the U. S. also allow voting on weekends and on multiple days. The individual states have the right (within limits) to set the time and rules of elections. Those states where conservatives have control tend to restrict voting as narrowly as they can, as their supporters tend to be more affluent and have jobs where they can vote on a Tuesday without economic penalty or family dislocation. Where liberals control, they tend to take steps to make voting very easy, especially of the poor and working class, as they have more supports in these groups.
Most of the Congressional Districts had become so gerrymandered that only one party could win. So whoever wins the primary election for the controlling party, will almost certainly win the general election.
At the time, the Republicans held the House of Representatives, but not the Senate or the Presidency. By popular vote, even the House elections had the majority voting for the Democrats, but the gerrymandering gave the Republicans more seats. A minority of the minority Republicans were Tea Party Republicans—ultra conservatives who would not compromise but who intimidated other Republicans by threatening to run candidates against them in primary elections. The result was that the Tea Party Republicans—a minority of the minority could block almost any legislation and did. That Congress passed less legislation than any in American history including the “Do Nothing Congress” of the Truman era.
Most political analysts agree that all of these were factors that produced the hyperpolarization of the time. There were others such as the Republican Southern Strategy which triggered a shift of Democratic conservatives to the Republican party. This made the Republicans more conservative and the Democrats more liberal. Then those strong ideological parties drove many of their moderates out, and the Tea Party ran even more conservative candidates knocking out less conservatives in the primaries. Another factor, the relatively even split of voters nationally causing most candidates to appeal to their bases which became more extreme. However, especially in the House of Representatives, the redistricting created so few competitive districts that there was no need for candidates with safe seats to even be concerned with moderate and undecided voters.
Frank Ian Luntz is an American political and communications consultant, pollster and pundit, best known for developing talking points and other messaging for Republican causes. His work has included assistance with messaging for Newt Gingrich's Contract with America, and public relations support for pro-Israel policies in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. He advocated use of vocabulary crafted to produce a desired effect; including use of the term death tax instead of estate tax, and climate change instead of global warming.
