However one identifies framing, I think it's fair to say that as a strategic system, framing works when the message resonates with the target audience. In this sense, framing is certainly more than the rhetorical structure of the message itself, because it needs to connect and harmonize with a pre-existing concept already in someone's mind.

I also agree with Lakoff that, by and large the GOP has a "Father Knows Best" rubric and the Liberals or Progressives have a "Nurturant" framework within which their views have cachet. (I would describe these two divergent forms more as "Authoritarianism vs Democracy", but that's perhaps for another time). And it's virtually a no brainer to grasp the fundamental reality that people adhereing to these different worldviews are going to react favorably and supportively to rhetoric that supports those views.

Where I disagree with your perspective is that I believe the broader arena within which framing is practised is also about creating worldviews and then exploiting or weaponizing those worldviews with framing afterwards. Let me explain.

In the past I worked in the field of cultic dynamics, working with people coming out of cults, and constantly examining the mechanisms and strategies used by cults to take otherwise normal and intelligent and well-integrated people and compromising their psychological autonomy and turning them into often times irrational, violent, and delusional human beings. And one of the main ways cults are able to make these transformations is by controlling the language used in the cult and linking that language on an emotional level to the cult recruits and members by exploiting vulnerabilities. And not all the exploitation is based on emotional weakness or ignorance. Idealism is frequently exploited, (witness the heavy recruitment efforts by cults on college campuses, for instance, seeking the idealistic youth to join the cult "commune"), as is the desire for love, (one of the most common recruitment tactics used in cult's is referred to as "Love Bombing"), fear of lonliness, search for meaning in life, and so on.

But here's the point. Cults use language to create new world views, and as those new worldviews are formed, the cult uses the corresponding subservience induced in their victims to further exploit them for whatever it is the cult seeks, whether it's money, sex, or just plain power. And,, importantly, the changes induced by language are incremental; one little psychic compromise sets the stage for the next one to take root. In a sense it's the same thing as using one frame to set someone up to be exploitable by the next frame.

The GOP extremist conservative machine has been doing this sort of cult-like manipulation of the public psyche for 30 years, and they're very good at it. Some of it certainly is a reflection of their warped views of what a society of man should be, but most of the agenda is about power and money for the few at the expense of the many. And I submit that their well-funded, decades long propaganda campaign has created worldviews, but more importantly, has deliberately magnified the importance and emotional impact of certain views in ways that has allowed them to then weaponize those views in the political arena and achieve goals that have actually nothing substantive to do with the frame they were using. (The "gay marriage" issue used to whack Kerry had some general resonance on both sides of the political aisle, but it was the accompanying fear campaign waged by the religious nuts that weaponized it and made it effective. "Clear Skies" or "Healthy Forests" have nothing to do with clear or healthy; nevertheless the frames these names signify were effective, even though they didn't reflect the principles of the party propagating them.

I will concede that a purist definition of "framing" does not by itself include the attribute of creating those views which allow it to be an effective communication tool. But, if framing is to be effective beyond the realm of it's own choir, so to speak, it seems to me that it requires the accompaniment of some sort of substantive message that extols the virtues and values and benefits of those principles that the framing seeks to resonate with. And this is where I find a significant problem with how the "framing" concept's efficacy is perceived.

On a smaller point, I didn't "...just say Luntz was a liar". Luntz is a liar, as anyone who knows his history can attest, but that's not what I said. I said he used his framing strategies to deceive and propagandize, and everyone knows that you don't need to lie in order to deceive. And, re Luntz, there is no doubt his framing keyed on sets of beliefs held by his targets, but the agenda advanced by the Luntz doggerel has little to do with the beliefs or principles it  exploits.

It seems framing genrally works best when it helps us to believe what we want to believe. But sometimes our propensity for believbing what we want to believe amounts to us being in a state of denial. With this inj mind, I think the discussion of framing might serve us better if we expand the arena in which framing has relevance.


Denial is our most dangerous adversary.