I see the manipulation all the time, and plenty more pointed out to me that I still miss, despite having an interest in propaganda...er, advertising...going back to reading Subliminal Seduction back in the 70s. (Yep, I saw the shapes in the ice cubes.) I've had a hand in creating some myself (advertising, not shapes in ice cubes), and worked a lot with big PR agencies. Believe me, I know how the game is played.

The modern American advertising industry traces the start of its bigtime success to importing the work of Joseph Goebbels after WWII; rocketry wasn't the only spoil of war we got from Germany. It was only a matter of time--about 15 years--before politicians latched on the modern science of "persuasion" and closed the circle, bringing propaganda back to its original political roots.

Republican thinktanks have spent billions over many years to achieve some impressive advancements building on Goebbel's work. The real genius of codifying an old ad-hoc rhetorical technique into the process of "framing" is that, once explained, anybody can do it, and it empowered hundreds of thousands of demagogues to obfuscate the issues with "frames" like "Death Tax" and "Tax Reform". It's gotten so bad that the only reliable way to understand Republican rhetoric is to simply invert it and take the opposite meaning.

Republicans may have "no surprises, only consistent pursuit of agenda", but man, never underestimate their hunger to win at any cost and how consistently and doggedly they'll pursue their agenda.