Although in recent weeks the news coming out of the Occupy Movement has been more about organizing tactics than political messages, the theme of economic inequality has solidly taken hold of the American public, and GOP spinmeisters are furiously working to make sure that their candidates don't get run over by it.
Of course, it might be too late when it comes to the GOP candidates running for president. Take Newt Gingrich's response, which was that they all needed to take a bath and stop being so ungrateful. Ditto Herman Cain, Rick Santorum, etc.
Speaking of Newt, his resurgence brings back memories of the first time the country ever heard of Frank Luntz, the GOP pollster who fed buzzwords to the Republican upstarts who took over the House of Representatives in 1994.
Luntz trained GOP members of Congress to use phrases like "Partial-Birth Abortion" to describe a late term abortion, for example. Luntz has a knack for dreaming up language designed to put Democrats on the defensive, and it often has worked. Another of his semantic tricks? Substituting the phrase "Death tax" for inheritance tax.
It's known as framing the discussion, and in the aughts Democrats began receiving similar advice from linguists like George Lakoff and Drew Weston.
We bring up this brief history as an introduction to Luntz's advice to Republicans re Occupy Wall Street, presented last week in Orlando at the Republican Governors Association meeting.
This article appears in Dec 1-7, 2011.