Sean Hannity And Frank Luntz Team Up To Ridicule Democratic Focus Group
Reported by Ellen - February 12, 2008 -
Once again, the supposedly neutral pollster, Frank Luntz, revealed his bias as he and Sean Hannity teamed up to ridicule a Democratic focus group on Hannity & Colmes last night, 2/11/08. With video.
At the opening of the segment, Hannity didn't bother to hide his glee at the possibility of more Obama wins in the next day's Potomac primaries. “Boy, if she loses tomorrow, Frank, that’s 20-8 in the last 28 contests,” he said with gusto.
Luntz laughed as Hannity spoke, then stopped suddenly as though remembering he was supposed to be non-partisan. Pointing to his group of Democratic voters behind him, he said, “They haven’t taken sides yet.”
After a few minutes of discussion between Luntz and the undecided voters, Hannity asked what he called a follow up to a question he asked another focus group. In actuality, he was repeating the same question – to name one accomplishment of Barack Obama. It was a blatant ploy to make Obama supporters look bad and it was one that Luntz played along with wholeheartedly.
“Oh, here we go again,” Luntz said. But it wasn’t long before he began ridiculing the respondents’ answers.
A woman said that one accomplishment was that Obama had served in the Senate. “Oh, so he got elected,” Luntz said sarcastically.
A man started to name one of Obama’s votes about children. “So, basically, he votes as a Senator. That’s an accomplishment.”
Another man said that Obama had given a great speech against the war in Iraq.
Luntz dismissed that by saying, “Giving a speech is not an accomplishment.”
“He’s the only African American senator in the Senate,” a young African American man said.
“So because of his color? That’s what you call it?” Luntz said dismissively.
Comment: Luntz and Hannity know damn well that as a junior Senator, Obama would not have accomplished much that would be easy for your average voter to point to. And they also know damn well that that doesn’t mean that Obama has been a do-nothing. He rose from humble beginnings to become the first African American to have a serious shot at the presidency. He was a community activist and a state legislator in Illinois before he arrived in the Senate. And he's giving the supposedly invincible Hillary Clinton one hell of a challenge.
You can write to Hannity and ask him to name one accomplishment of George W. Bush before he became president at [email protected].
