It reminds me of the GOP’s efforts to repeal the estate tax. They paid Frank Luntz to come up with a PR solution to get the rubes to be pro-rich. I wonder what they paid him. A million dollars? Anyway - his solution was to call it a “death tax”. And that worked like a charm.

-–

Ninja edit

James L. Martin, chairman of the conservative 60 Plus Association, described Luntz’s role as being that of pollster and popularizer of the phrase “death tax.”

Martin gained an important ally in GOP pollster Frank Luntz, whose polling revealed that ‘death tax’ sparked voter resentment in a way that ‘inheritance tax’ and ‘estate tax’ couldn’t match. After all, who wouldn’t be opposed to a ‘tax on death’? Luntz shared his findings with Republicans and included the phrase in the GOP’s Contract with America. Luntz went so far as to recommend in a memo to GOP lawmakers that they stage press conferences ‘at your local mortuary’ to dramatize the issue.

‘I believe this backdrop will clearly resonate with your constituents,’ he wrote. ‘Death is something the American people understand.’ Apparently, he’s right. Spurred by Luntz, Republicans have employed the term ‘death tax’ so aggressively that it has entered the popular lexicon. Nonpartisan venues like newspapers and magazines have begun to use it in a neutral context—a coup for abolitionists like Martin.

In a confidential memo to the Republican party, Luntz is credited with advising the Bush administration that the phrase “global warming” should be abandoned in favour of “climate change”, which he called a “less frightening” phrase than the former.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Luntz