SORRY TO BREAK THIS TO YOU, FRANK, BUT WORDS ACTUALLY MEAN THINGS

GOP pollster/strategist Frank Luntz at the Huffington Post:

Senator Barbara Boxer can't really believe that a single woman without children is totally incapable of feeling emotional loss just because she hasn't had any children in combat, can she? Yet that's exactly what she said to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

Oh, very sly, Frank. You know perfectly well that's not "exactly what she said" -- or meant. Here is "exactly what she said":

Now, the issue is who pays the price, who pays the price? I'm not going to pay a personal price. My kids are too old, and my grandchild is too young. You're not going to pay a particular price, as I understand it, within immediate family. So who pays the price? The American military and their families, and I just want to bring us back to that fact.

There's nothing in there -- nothing -- about the ability or inability to feel emotional loss. All Boxer said was that Rice isn't among the people who are going to lose close relatives in combat in Iraq -- and neither is Boxer.

But you're a Republican, Frank, so of course you're not going to pass up one last opportunity to twist Boxer's words. Adding "exactly" is just a brazen way of trying to conceal your deliberate distortion of the truth.

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(The rest of Luntz's piece is just more in that vein -- feigned shock at the supposed harshness of a few mild utterances by Democrats. In every case, he's reprising a phony squeal of outrage that's already made the rounds of the right-wing media and the Internet right and should have been laid to rest by now.)