Sam Stein reports that GOP pollster Frank Luntz is putting together a memorandum on how the GOP can derail financial regulation:
Nine months after he penned a memo laying out the arguments for health care legislation's destruction, Republican message guru Frank Luntz has put together a playbook to help derail financial regulatory reform.
In a 17-page memo titled, "The Language of Financial Reform," Luntz urged opponents of reform to frame the final product as filled with bank bailouts, lobbyist loopholes, and additional layers of complicated government bureaucracy.
"If there is one thing we can all agree on, it's that the bad decisions and harmful policies by Washington bureaucrats that in many ways led to the economic crash must never be repeated," Luntz wrote. "This is your critical advantage. Washington's incompetence is the common ground on which you can build support."
Luntz continued: "Ordinarily, calling for a new government program 'to protect consumers' would be extraordinary popular. But these are not ordinary times. The American people are not just saying 'no.' They are saying 'hell no' to more government agencies, more bureaucrats, and more legislation crafted by special interests."
In Republican circles Luntz's words, which have helped the party score win the message wars over health care and other legislative battles, are often treated as gospel. Already, some of the advice he's offered on regulatory reform has found its way into the political discourse -- with a proposed Consumer Financial Protection Agency seemingly on life support under Republican objections.
The tone of Stein's piece implies that Luntz is up to no good.
Personally, I think he's very much on the side of the angels. If we learned anything from the Sarbanes-Oxley, we learned that Washington is incompetent to regulation the financial industry. The costs of SOX have been high, the benefits extremely uncertain. One thing we do know, however, is that SOX didn't do anything to prevent the crisis of 2008. Yet, while Sarbanes and Oxley have retired, many of their cohorts from last time--Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, and their ilk--are leading the charge for regulation this time. Why should we trust them to get it right this time?
