Political Framing Quotes

It really does seem that the Democrat's problem isn't that they're calling for timetables - it's that they're calling them 'timetables'. You're up against Bush and the Republicans - you've got to bring some zing. Don't call them timetables - call them 'Patriot Dates', 'Freedom Deadlines'... 'Glory Goals'.

I've always been a fan of the Overton Window. It's not a piece of glass but a political theory named after the conservative American political analyst, Joseph P Overton.

The classic one for me is one of my favorite images - left-versus-right political-spectrum image. I was trying to visualize the concepts on the political spectrum. I'm left-leaning, and I discovered as I was doing it that I had an impulse to make the left-hand side appear better than the right-hand side. That was manifesting in the way I was choosing certain words, framing certain ideas. I shared it with a few people, and they all said, "Oh my God, this is really biased." I hadn't seen it at all.

Political folk talk a lot these days about 'messaging' - a neologism designed to describe the way in which parties and politicians consciously characterize their efforts. It is only intended to be positive - i.e., 'Our messaging is designed to show we care.'

Newt Gingrich developed a whole vocabulary of polarization in order to get Republican candidates elected.

Most pundits regard an election year session as an opportunity for the two parties to frame issues and garner political advantage in advance of the approaching election.

You know what the left has succeeded in doing, they have succeeded, in terms of the vernacular, the lexicon, they've redefined the word "immigration" and to tell everyone we're anti-immigrant.

The use of EU summits to frame political victories or defeats is an annoying habit.