From "America’s top pollster: What Trump voters think now surprises me/Frank Luntz says the new political reality of the US — and the world — can be summarised in one word" (London Times).
We were just laughing at Frank Luntz yesterday, here.
April 28, 2025
"The Trump phenomenon could be dismissed as a cult of personality, but Luntz believes otherwise."
"'You say to me, when Trump leaves, does this go away? I’ll say to you, absolutely not, because of JD Vance,' he says. Vance’s reputation among the Maga faithful has grown since his assured performance in the vice-presidential debate with Tim Walz, Luntz says. 'He presented an ideology behind the Trump cult of personality. Vance found a way to take all the individual aspects of Trump’s policies and put them in a way that will outlast Trump. It was masterful. This is also part of the de-alignment — now there is an ideology and it’s not just Trump’s persona.'"
From "America’s top pollster: What Trump voters think now surprises me/Frank Luntz says the new political reality of the US — and the world — can be summarised in one word" (London Times).
From "America’s top pollster: What Trump voters think now surprises me/Frank Luntz says the new political reality of the US — and the world — can be summarised in one word" (London Times).
Posts
65 comments:
Like Donald Trump, and Dondi, I am the Cult of Personality!
JSM
He's correct.
I saw two interviews today of the Secretary of Treasury. MAGA is going to have a long run. Vance, Bessent and Trump are setting the US up for a Golden Age.
Trump would have deported Dondi’s greasy little war-orphan ass….
JSM
From William of Orange, hero of the first "Hill Billies," through William Jennings Bryant, through FDR, to Donald Trump. I am sure I am forgetting some who are lost to popular history.
Wait, what? We're not a cult? You mean I made the batch of Kool-Aid for nothing?
Who do the Dems have? AOC? JP Prizter? The Maryland or PA governors?
What the Dems really have is failed policies that America hates. Protecting MS-13 gang members from deportation is their #1 policy idea.
By calling it a "cult of personality" you erase the economic issues from the discussion. The same as when Dr Weevil claims that there are "no ethnic Russians" in Ukraine, in large areas of that country which have been Russian for centuries. It's a way propagandists shape the terms of a debate to avoid the weaknesses and contradictions of their arguments.
Vance strikes me as somebody who doesn't get it. Trump doesn't formalize and that's what always covers the problem at hand. Trump treats problems as women to be seduced. Formalization is the opposite.
Luntz said about Trump voters " It’s a value I’ve never seen in American politics until now, that desire to punish your opponent.”
Really?!? Never?? I guess Luntz must have been in a coma for the last 4 or more years. The Democrats have focused on nothing but trying to destroy, punish, eliminate their opponents. Political opponents (Trump in particular) being targeted with "law-fare". Punitive and ridiculous law cases. Cancel Culture...lose your job, lose your reputation if you don't agree with their progressive agendas.
It has been relentless and finally, people are fed up.
FAFO. Finally
Vance is eloquent. Don't ignore his loyalty, though. When Zelensky was a weasel in the WH, Vance confronted him on behalf of Trump. Somehow Vance manages to convey that he's next in line without undermining the current POTUS. We admire that.
How could I forget the Dems own cult of personality? Secretary Pete.
The guy who failed to improve and upgrade the 40 to 50 year old computer equipment at the FAA. The guy who totally failed in his job. He needs to be the leader of the Free World because he is glib and gay. And failed.
That "one word" description is "dealignment." I think Luntz needs to work on his theory a little more. He's got a lot correct, but he still acts like the tiny stock market correction was some Black Friday like event and we would be worried about the Dow Jones. He hears his focus groups but I wonder if he's actually listening to what they say.
Vance is smart, well spoken, and comes from Trump’s base - poor and middle class whites who the democrats have demonized. Vance was a great pick. I wished that Trump had picked Tulsi as running mate, but I concede that would have been a mistake and Vance is as close to perfect pick kne could have made.
Think of Hillbilly Elegy as Vance's Mein Kampf.
OK, I am not going to be seduced by the temptress running this place into spending another morning indulging perusing and engaging in the admittedly amusing badinage of these comments. In fact, I am not even going to fix the previous sentence, which reads terribly. See you after I have had a nice long walk and read a few dozen pages on dead tree written by a DWM, and maybe even have enjoyed a nice swim and a piña colada.
Luntz says "It’s a value I’ve never seen in American politics until now, that desire to punish your opponent.”
Really? He's never seen this attitude before now? It's called payback, and it's not always pleasant.
The collective hive left do not understand that their obsession with Trump - is the real cult.
"Someone who embraces Trump's popular policies but doesn't come across as an a-hole." - There will be several politicians who will be able to meet this reasonable standard in 2028.
I'm more concerned about the 22% of Democrat youths that think the cold-blooded murder of the UHC CEO was completely justified (over 40% thought it at least somewhat acceptable).
Outside of the MSNBC(D) lie machine - a growing number of Americans are sick of the corrupt democratic party.
There was something like an "ideology" even before Trump came along, or maybe a protoideology, the beginning of a collection of policies that hadn't yet cohered. MAGA is going to go on without Trump. Will it win elections? Maybe not. Reagan was popular, but other "hardcore conservatives" didn't win the White House after Reagan. The electorate is fickle. If Trump fails, they'll reject MAGA. If he succeeds, they may figure "job done" and move on to something else.
The piece is still trying to portray Trump supporters as idiots and ignoramuses. After all, there is no rational reason to distrust the institutions that are actively looking after their own interests and despise the working and middle classes. Its not like they were flooding the country with illegal aliens in order to influence the 2030 census and getting their illegal votes. And its not "dealignment." Its realignment. They did get one thing correct, social media and the internet is a driving source behind the realignment. Quite a few people predicted back in the late 80s and early 90s that once the internet went public and the communications model went from a broadcast from the favored few to the masses model to a peer to peer model there would be major changes in society. Its simply delicious irony that most leftist thought that it would favor them.
"It is not all plain sailing for Trump with those who voted for him last November, however. Luntz is finding deep concerns among the 20 per cent of independent voters who handed him his swing state majorities.
“That 20 per cent wants a reduction in government spending and they want a reduction in bureaucrats. But they’re not looking for indiscriminate firing of people,” Luntz says. “They want it done with a scalpel, not a sledgehammer or a chainsaw.”"
This is a recipe for getting NOTHING done. We've tried this for decades. Talking about cutting the deficit and as soon as you try you get what is going on now. Throwing grandma over the cliff, starving and chaining black people, cutting all medicare, medicaid, foodstamps, social security. I'm sorry that the independents don't have the stomach for what needs to happen, because they are part of the problem. Man the **** UP. What part of 37TRILLION in debt do they not understand?
I have of course never claimed "that there are 'no ethnic Russians' in Ukraine" (8:46am). That is a bald-faced lie from 'Jaq' (far from his first). I have pointed out that ethnic Russians are not the same thing as Russian-speaking Ukrainians, that the former are a minority in both Donbas provinces, and that both Donbas provinces voted to join Ukraine in 1991 by a 5-1 margin (83%). The ethnic Russians who want to make Donbas Russian have no right to force the majority to submit to Russian rule, still less to use the methods they and their Putinist puppet-masters are using: torture, rape, ethnic cleansing, destroying Ukrainian books, beating people heard speaking Ukrainian, drafting ethnic Ukrainians to fight their fellow Ukrainians, and other such Nazi tactics. Which 'Jaq' enthusiastically supports.
Ethnic Russians may be a majority in Crimea, but only because the rightful occupants, the Crimean Tatars, were almost all murdered by Stalin or shipped to Tatarstan, and replaced by Russian colonists, as was also done in the Baltics. The Tatars much prefer Ukrainian to Russian rule. In any case, Crimea voted to join Ukraine in 1991, though by a less margin than the Donbas, Russia officially accepted the border then, repeated that acceptance with the Budapest Memorandum in 1994, and ratified the Treaty on the Russian-Ukrainian Border in 2004. The invasions of 2014 and 2022 were in fact utterly unjustified, barbarous, and fraudulent, since most of the supposed 'insurgents' were Russian regulars sent across the border. The 'insurgencies' in Crimea and Donbas were both begun by Igor Girkin, a KGB colonel from Moscow. There was nothing organic or indigenous about either one.
Que another instance of why the democrat propaganda media is not trusted. TRILLIONS LOST IN THE MARKET!!!! And the accompanying ( NOT ) TRILLIONS GAINED IN THE MARKET!!!
They can never be trusted, not ever.
I guess I imagined it then.
"Ethnic Russians may be a majority in Crimea, but only because the rightful occupants, the Crimean Tatars, were almost all murdered by Stalin or shipped to Tatarstan, and replaced by Russian colonists"
So why aren't we spending the billions making it right with the American Indians and settling all of their land claims, instead of worrying about what is going on within the borders of the old USSR on the other side of the planet?
What you are describing just sounds like justification for a planned ethnic cleansing as soon as Kiev gets control of those regions, the banning the official use of Russian where it has been spoke for centuries, and erasing Russian culture. Why the US would have anything to do with that is beyond me.
But thanks for proving my point.
There's a Class element to all of this. Those laptop influencers and their compatriots who aggressively elbow for time on cable news are missing the working class's mood.
They elected Trump because they were fed up with the leadership in academia, corporate, and government who have spent the past three decades focking average people in the butt. It's not a cult of personality, but a cry from the guts of America.
If they are successful at using judges and bureaucrats to thwart Trump, then they're really not going to like who comes after Trump.
In FY24, our income was $5.0 trillion and we spent $6.8 trillion.
We spent 38% more than we brought in.
And this was a year in which we had, practically, no large special unique spending. This is essentially baseline.
THIRTY EIGHT PERCENT.
Imagine we need to cut one TRILLION DOLLARS of spending annually.
Do you think a trillion in debt spending is cut without lots and lots of people losing jobs? Do you think it's done with a "Scalpel"
No, it's done with:
1. Sledgehammer approaches to entire functions, such as what was done with USAID.
2. Sweeping efforts to reduce waste/fraud, which is estimated at half a trillion alone annually.
3. And THEN ideally a 2-3 year budget freeze at current levels to allow for a multi-year period of zero increases in spending.
Vance may be too well-spoken. Voters may find him too glib. Think of Martin Van Buren who was able to win a term with Andrew Jackson's populist message only to lose when the Whigs in turn played the populist card against him. Bush I wasn't well-spoken at all, but Clinton and Perot were able to play that populist card against him. I know, "Hillbilly Elegy" ... but, Yale.
EXCELLENT comments! More clear thinking and wisdom found here than any in the MSM can muster.
Ukraine is not planning an ethnic cleansing of Russian-speakers in Donbas because Ukrainians are perfectly free to speak Russian in Ukraine, and always have been. Those who know say that Russian is spoken in Odesa (for instance) just as much as Ukrainian, and no one cares. The war-criminals will have to leave or be prosecuted, and the colonists who moved into houses belonging to Ukrainians after the Russian army captured a town will have to bugger off back to their home-towns, too, but that is not ethnic cleansing: it's simple justice.
Further, Ukrainians do not respond to Russian war crimes by committing the same war crimes themselves. Russia kills Ukrainian civilians in their homes, restaurants, buses, and hospitals every night of the week, but Ukraine does not, and will not, bomb civilian targets. When prisoners are exchanged, many of the Ukrainian soldiers come home weighing 80-100 pounds less than when they are captured, while the Russians look quite plump. So no, Russian ethnic cleansing will not be answered by Ukrainian ethnic cleansing, because the Ukrainians are not in fact Nazis or admirers of Nazis. 'Bothsidesism' in this case is a disgusting lie.
Jaq: "maybe even have enjoyed a nice swim and a piña colada"
Will you get caught in the rain? In the dunes by the Cape?
JSM
"If they are successful at using judges and bureaucrats to thwart Trump, then they're really not going to like who comes after Trump."
The TEA party was the polite attempt to get grievances addressed. The PTB squashed that, so now we are using Trump as our instrument. WWII ended 80 years ago. The USSR fell between 1989-91. The first web browser was released 32 years ago. The governing system setup by the Western powers following WWII to manage the world is no longer relevant and has become corrupt.
President Trump, and his cult of personality, came with a bundle of policies, which were wildly popular with the majority of Americans.
"Who do the Dems have? AOC? JP Prizter? The Maryland or PA governors?"
50% of America will vote for any one of them, because democrats.
If the right ever attaches to a real ideologue, the left will be begging to bring Trump back. Even Reagan's ideology was tempered by half a life of real-world experience.
The greatest fear that a Democrat has is that one dime of federal spending will go to anyone who is not their boss or in their fealty.
"…their pension accounts are being depleted"
Saying shit that's not true really hurts your credibility, Frank.
some are, the azovs and the svoboda are a minor faction, in the big scheme of this, the operator at the heart of wagner,
had similar sentiments
Dust Bunny Queen said...
Luntz said about Trump voters " It’s a value I’ve never seen in American politics until now, that desire to punish your opponent.”
Really?!? Never?? I guess Luntz must have been in a coma for the last 4 or more years. The Democrats have focused on nothing but trying to destroy, punish, eliminate their opponents.
Yeah, Luntz's assertion is absurd. Just look at the unprecedented legal jihad against a former
President and his legal team.
Luntz says. “They want it done with a scalpel, not a sledgehammer or a chainsaw.”"
Dude1394 said: "This is a recipe for getting NOTHING done."
Yep. Sledgehammer is the only way.
A cultural philosophy... Pro-Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.
File this latest epiphany of Frank Luntz under "Even a blind squirrel finds an acorn now and then".
luntz had one insight, with the contract with America in 94 and has been coasting on that, for 30 years
"narciso said...
luntz had one insight, with the contract with America in 94 and has been coasting on that, for 30 years."
I was told it was a Contract ON America.
Sure, because before JD Vance was on the ticket, we Trump voters were just ignorant cultists who had no idea what Trump's program involved.
The fact that Luntz had to be hit upside the head with a large 2X4 yesterday to get that Trump's voters actually understand what Trump is doing and what he is trying to accomplish tells you what a deep thinker he is.
This was the guy who was predicting a Harris cakewalk 2 months before the election.
Also "America's Top Pollster." What the...?
oh noes..the greater issue is how many of these prospectus were shortsided in their presentation of securities,
Perhaps, years from now, when a moron is touted as an expert, people will say: “That guy’s a real Luntz”. Sounds better than “That guy’s a real Krugman”.
"I just checked and my IRA is down 1.4% from six months ago. Its Armageddon man, Armageddon!"
I also just checked. Our portfolio is down 1.6% from the beginning of the year.
Even less, when you factor in some of that money would have gone to taxes if it were withdrawn.
Dude 1394 is absolutely correct.
Whether it is Vance or someone else in 2028, any candidate who tells me that there's really no way to cut spending and that massive cuts are just too painful will lose my vote. I'm fairly certain that there are at least 60 million Trump voters who feel the same way.
As TreeJoe points out, we as a country are spending way more money that we can afford to. It is really that simple. Don't tell us that it can't be done.
And there is nothing sacrosanct about "defense" spending, either.
I voted for Trump in spite of his personality.
America’s top pollster is Rasmussen. Period.
followed by Atlas and Trafalgar,
The slight drop in value of my portolio is balanced out by the drop in inflation.
"not just to defeat them but to punish them. It’s a value I’ve never seen in American politics until now, that desire to punish your opponent.”
Was Frank Luntz asleep during the last 10 years?? The other side started out spying, and then lying about the Trump administration for years and tried to punish him for things they do themselves...and yet Trumps the problem?? THIS is why we don't trust any of the liars like Frank.
Original Mike said...
Luntz says. “They want it done with a scalpel, not a sledgehammer or a chainsaw.”"
Dude1394 said: "This is a recipe for getting NOTHING done."
Yep. Sledgehammer is the only way.
Not a sledge hammer.
A jail cell is the only way.
Me too, Jaime Roberto - Trump was never my cup of tea as, say, a neighbor. But as a President, he appears to share many of my concerns and has the determination of a terrier to act on those concerns, plus the courage to try something instead of just constantly trotting out the precautionary principle to keep from having to try anything, plus the practicality to change course when something or someone isn't working out - he seldom resorts to sunk cost arguments.
And then there's the sheer gigantic cojones.
The midterms will determine what voters think of the president's policies.
There's more opportunity for Lunt's business in the 'Trump is sinking the economy' narrative, rather than people in general don't panic over the stock markets ups and downs.
Never misunderestimate J D VANCE. He has it all.
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