Why are republicans calling the finance bill a "bailout"? Because Frank Luntz told them to.

Congressional Republicans can’t quite remember where their main talking point against Democratic financial-reform legislation came from, but they insist they know where it didn’t come from — Frank Luntz.

The talking point’s authorship has become more than an academic question because gleeful Democrats say that in calling the bill a bailout, Republicans are simply parroting lines from a memo circulated by one of the party’s most prominent message mavens — an effective counterattack that has helped them with their own message that the GOP is reflexively negative.

Frustrated Republicans say their anti-bailout rhetoric is nothing new, pointing to similar language they used dating back to not long after the financial crisis began in 2008. And they make no effort to hide their frustration with the controversial pollster and strategist.

“We’ve been talking about it way before Luntz,” said New Jersey Rep. Scott Garrett, a senior Republican on the House Financial Services Committee.

Others are nastier, accusing Luntz of seeking attention and making himself the center of the story to the detriment of the party.

Luntz isn’t talking about the memo’s origins, refusing to say whom he wrote it for or how it found its way into the political bloodstream. “The fact is, there was no health care language to oppose the government takeover, so I wrote it,” he said in an e-mail from London. “And there was no language to stop these permanent bailouts, so I wrote it.”

Congressional Republicans can’t quite remember where their main talking point against Democratic financial-reform legislation came from, but they insist they know where it didn’t come from — Frank Luntz.

The talking point’s authorship has become more than an academic question because gleeful Democrats say that in calling the bill a bailout, Republicans are simply parroting lines from a memo circulated by one of the party’s most prominent message mavens — an effective counterattack that has helped them with their own message that the GOP is reflexively negative.

Frustrated Republicans say their anti-bailout rhetoric is nothing new, pointing to similar language they used dating back to not long after the financial crisis began in 2008. And they make no effort to hide their frustration with the controversial pollster and strategist.

“We’ve been talking about it way before Luntz,” said New Jersey Rep. Scott Garrett, a senior Republican on the House Financial Services Committee.

Others are nastier, accusing Luntz of seeking attention and making himself the center of the story to the detriment of the party.

Luntz isn’t talking about the memo’s origins, refusing to say whom he wrote it for or how it found its way into the political bloodstream. “The fact is, there was no health care language to oppose the government takeover, so I wrote it,” he said in an e-mail from London. “And there was no language to stop these permanent bailouts, so I wrote it.”
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0410/36170.html

:)