This Political Cartoon Shows How Hypocritical Republicans Are About Choosing Which Words To Use

by T. Steelman  Over the past week or so, we’ve heard Fox News — and just about everyone on the right — whining about how President Obama isn’t referring to ISIL by the term they prefer. He won’t call it “radical Islam,” and that has them frothing at the mouth. They know how important framing is and they are desperate to have the White House use the framing which the right has settled on.
The right knows how important words are: which ones you use, how you use them. They’ve been working from the game plan of Frank Luntz, after all. Luntz is their Word Wizard and basically writes the Republican script. He has been called (besides other things), “one of the world’s greatest propagandists for hire.” Luntz’s motto is:

“It’s not what you say that counts. It’s what people hear.”

As we well know, the right has favorite terms and buzzwords with which they shape an issue in their favor. This is how they manage to drive the conversation on policy. The worst thing about this is that we allow it. “Job Creators,” “government takeover of healthcare,”death tax,”energy exploration” and “conservationist” are all Luntzisms.
This political cartoon by Rob Rogers brilliantly illustrates the way Republicans twist words to their favor:

We know that the term “Obamacare” was coined by health care lobbyist Jeanne Schulte Scott during the 2008 presidential campaign. It wasn’t aimed at Obama directly then; she was talking about healthcare reform in the abstract, pointing out that we’d get “Hillary-care” or “McCain-care” and so on. But the “government takeover” was pure Luntz. And to this day, Republicans cling to both that (despite debunking) and “Obamacare.”
When it comes to the term, “climate change,” we have to acknowledge that it is a Luntzism. In 2002, he sent a memo to the Bush White House, advising them to use that term rather than “global warming” because the latter might scare people into actually doing something about it. He also advised:

“The scientific debate is closing [against us] but not yet closed. There is still a window of opportunity to challenge the science. Voters believe that there is no consensus about global warming within the scientific community. Should the public come to believe that the scientific issues are settled, their views about global warming will change accordingly. Therefore, you need to continue to make the lack of scientific certainty a primary issue in the debate.”

We still hear Republicans following this advice and avoiding any real discussion by saying, “I’m not a scientist.” Yes, we know. They also use “conservationist” rather than “environmentalist.” At least when they are talking about themselves. It’s okay to use against the left, though because most people think an “environmentalist” is also an extremist. The funny thing is, almost everyone now uses “climate change” so it has lost its power.
When it comes to income inequality, the Republicans are desperate to control the dialogue. During the time of Occupy Wall Street, Luntz admitted that he was “scared to death” yet he still managed to produce a plan. Of course, the GOP is still using phrases like “taking from the rich” to control the dialogue. But they love to use “class warfare” most of all. Granted, we on the left don’t really call it ‘spreading the wealth” — unless it’s a socialist speaking — but we do believe that the wealth should be a bit more even.
With their history of manipulating words to control the conversation, the right has no ground to stand on when they call out the President for not using the term they prefer. Obama has a very good reason not to use it, though. Like George Bush before him, Obama knows that we need the help of other Islamic states to defeat extremists in the Middle East. Bush never called al-Qaeda “radical Islamists” or “jihadists”: he used terms like “evildoers” and “extremists.” Because he knew we needed, and still do, the aid of the Saudis to defeat ISIL. Obama knows this, too.
The President has another reason for not calling ISIL “radical Islamists.” By referring to them this way, it would legitimize their claim of being an Islamic caliphate. Withholding that legitimacy works, too. In recently declassified files taken when we killed Osama bin Laden, the leader complained that doing so had negatively impacted the al-Qaeda brand:

“The al-Qaeda brand had become a problem, bin Laden explained, because Obama administration officials ‘have largely stopped using the phrase ‘the war on terror’ in the context of not wanting to provoke Muslims,’ and instead promoted a war against al-Qaeda. The organization’s full name was ‘Qaeda al-Jihad,’ bin Laden noted, but in its shorthand version, ‘this name reduces the feeling of Muslims that we belong to them.'”

So, maybe President Obama knows what he’s doing. If Fox News can ignore the words of Osama bin Laden when it comes to branding an extremist group, they won’t listen to anyone. Of course not. That would cause them to lose one of their favorite talking points. Besides, it’s much too nuanced for them or their viewers.