Yahoo News’ Chris Moody reports that “Luntz offered tips on how Republicans could discuss the grievances of the Occupiers, and help the governors better handle all these new questions from constituents about ‘income inequality’ and ‘paying your fair share.’”

“I’m so scared of this anti-Wall Street effort. I’m frightened to death,” said Luntz, a Republican strategist and one of the nation’s foremost experts on crafting the perfect political message. “They’re having an impact on what the American people think of capitalism.”

According to Moody, this was Luntz’s advice:

1. Don’t say ‘capitalism.’

“I’m trying to get that word removed and we’re replacing it with either ‘economic freedom’ or ‘free market,’ ” Luntz said. “The public . . . still prefers capitalism to socialism, but they think capitalism is immoral. And if we’re seen as defenders of quote, Wall Street, end quote, we’ve got a problem.”

2. Don’t say that the government ‘taxes the rich.’ Instead, tell them that the government ‘takes from the rich.’

“If you talk about raising taxes on the rich,” the public responds favorably, Luntz cautioned. But  ”if you talk about government taking the money from hardworking Americans, the public says no. Taxing, the public will say yes.”

3. Republicans should forget about winning the battle over the ‘middle class.’ Call them ‘hardworking taxpayers.’

“They cannot win if the fight is on hardworking taxpayers. We can say we defend the ‘middle class’ and the public will say, I’m not sure about that. But defending ‘hardworking taxpayers’ and Republicans have the advantage.”

4. Don’t talk about ‘jobs.’ Talk about ‘careers.’

“Everyone in this room talks about ‘jobs,’” Luntz said. “Watch this.”

He then asked everyone to raise their hand if they want a “job.” Few hands went up. Then he asked who wants a “career.” Almost every hand was raised.

“So why are we talking about jobs?”

5. Don’t say ‘government spending.’ Call it ‘waste.’

“It’s not about ‘government spending.’ It’s about ‘waste.’ That’s what makes people angry.”

6. Don’t ever say you’re willing to ‘compromise.’

“If you talk about ‘compromise,’ they’ll say you’re selling out. Your side doesn’t want you to ‘compromise.’ What you use in that to replace it with is ‘cooperation.’ It means the same thing. But cooperation means you stick to your principles but still get the job done. Compromise says that you’re selling out those principles.”

7. The three most important words you can say to an Occupier: ‘I get it.’

“First off, here are three words for you all: ‘I get it.’ . . . ‘I get that you’re. I get that you’ve seen inequality. I get that you want to fix the system.”

Then, he instructed, offer Republican solutions to the problem.

8. Out: ‘Entrepreneur.’ In: ‘Job creator.’

Use the phrases “small business owners” and “job creators” instead of “entrepreneurs” and “innovators.”

9. Don’t ever ask anyone you want them to ‘sacrifice.’

“There isn’t an America today in November of 2011 who doesn’t think they’ve already sacrificed. If you tell them you want them to ‘sacrifice,’ they’re going to be be pretty angry at you. You talk about how ‘we’re all in this together.’ We either succeed together or we fail together.”

10. Always blame Washington.

Tell them, “You shouldn’t be occupying Wall Street, you should be occupying Washington. You should occupy the White House because it’s the policies over the past few years that have created this problem.”

The Occupy movement has scored a number of small victories since September, when the Occupy Wall Street protesters first assembled in downtown New York. Bank of America announced it would not be charging debit card fees, one of the many triggers that sparked the protests, and a congressman introduced an amendment called the OCCUPIED Amendment that would reform campaign finance laws. Campaign finance rules that favor corporate power are a chief Occupy Wall Street target.

The figure on donations from the company’s political action committee actually come closer to $30,000 over the time Perry’s been governor — though still a pittance compared to the governor’s total campaign contributions, and Perry could still be “offended,” as he said last night, by the suggestion he coud be bought for even that much.

But as the Washington Post reports today, along with nearly $30,000 directly, Merck gave more than $355,000 to the Republican Governors Association in the years since Perry became prominent in the group. Perry was chairman of the RGA in 2008 and earlier this year, until he launched his presidential campaign.

As the Los Angeles Times points out today, Perry wasn’t just an influential figure in the group — he’s also been one of its biggest beneficiaries, bringing in $4 million from the RGA in the last five years, making it the top contributor to his reelection efforts:

The organization’s donations came as Perry helped infuse the governors’ group with millions of dollars from some of his major political patrons. Out of the $217 million the RGA raised between January 2006 and June 2011, $68.7 million came from 139 donors who have also given to Perry, according to a new report being released Tuesday morning by the watchdog group Texans for Public Justice.

Nearly a third of those contributors were wealthy Texans who form the backbone of Perry’s finance operation — many of whom were not active donors to the RGA until 2006, when the Texas governor took on a bigger role at the organization.

Perry’s rise in the group fueled not just new contributions from the RGA, the Times reports, but a new set of wealthy Texan donors for the RGA:

Once Perry became involved with the RGA, Texas donations to the group rose from an average of 5% of the RGA’s total funds between 2003 and 2005 to nearly a 15% average in the past six years. In that time, Perry’s state donors gave the RGA $24.3 million, according to data provided by the Center for Responsive Politics that was analyzed by Texans for Public Justice.

Read the full report from Texans for Public Justice below:

Perry RGA Cross Over

Erick Erickson, the prominent conservative blogger at RedState, wrote, “[T]his hire forces me to pay attention to Tim Pawlenty and you should too now. Putting a twenty-something in such a position is a bold and risky move. But Nick Ayers’s track record suggests Pawlenty is suddenly a force to be reckoned with — especially for guys like me who were counting him out before he really got started.”

Ayers most recently ran the Republican Governors Association, a group that spent almost a million dollars attempting to take Dayton down during the 2010 election by funneling money to Minnesota’s Future, an LLC that some allege was designed to mask the source of the funds. That setup generated campaign finance complaints which were eventually dismissed.

In an email announcing his decision to work for Pawlenty, Ayers said that God pointed him in Pawlenty’s direction:

Over the past six months, I have prayed deeply about my purpose in life and how best to utilize the talents God has given me. I wanted my decision to be wholly about how best to serve Him, not what was most politically or financially expedient for my family and me. As He often does in walks of faith, He has called me to a higher purpose. I believe that our Nation is truly on the wrong path. We need a new direction that is positive and hopeful. Simply said, we need new leadership. I believe that Governor Pawlenty is best positioned to provide that leadership. Therefore, I am pleased today to join Governor and Mrs. Pawlenty in their pursuit of the presidency.

Pawlenty’s is not the first campaign for Ayers. In 2006, he ran the campaign for Georgia Gov. Sonny Purdue, the first Republican elected to that state’s executive office since Reconstruction. It was during the 2006 campaign that Ayers was arrested of driving under the influence of alcohol.

And it’s not the first of Pawlenty’s staffers to have a rap sheet involving alcohol. Last weekend, Pawlenty staffer Ben Foster was arrested after he drunkenly tried to enter a home he thought was his friend’s but turned out to be in an entirely different Iowa city.

Smith’s latest scoop will only feed such flames, as the Chamber is currently engaged in what it hopes will be a $75 million spending campaign almost entirely on behalf of Republican candidates during the upcoming election cycle. The Chamber’s nearly $8 million in ad spending thus far makes it the biggest spender of any interest group.

Smith notes that, in the past, News Corp. had — like ABC parent company Disney and NBC parent company GE — spread its donations more evenly across both political parties:

Murdoch’s political leanings were considered to be pragmatic rather than strictly ideological. Although known as a conservative, he turned his right-leaning British papers behind Labor Prime Minister Tony Blair and flirted with support for Senator Hillary Clinton when she was a Democratic presidential candidate. But his political giving have been sharply aligned with the Republican Party this year.

The Times notes that few nonprofit groups, so far, have been more active during this election cycle than AJS, which spent $6 million on ads during the primaries and just indicated it’s paying close to $4 million more for ads directly attacking nine Democrats running for the House. The close ties between the group and a number of Republican operatives, combined with court documents obtained from a recent case against AJS in Alaska, however, raise some serious questions about whether the pro-jobs “issue advocacy group” is in fact anything more than a funnel for conservative donors looking to spend money anonymously on pet political causes and races:

The group’s Republican connections begin with location: While its public address is a drop box at a United Parcel Service store in Alexandria, Va., [the group's president] Mr. DeMaura actually works out of space that is sublet from a Republican consulting shop, Crossroads Media, whose other clients include the national Republican Party, the Republican Governors Association and American Crossroads, a Karl Rove-backed group raising millions to support Republican candidates.

Crossroads Media is run by Michael Dubke and David Carney, who along with several business groups helped start Americans for Job Security in 1997. Mr. Carney had been political director for President George Bush, and Mr. Dubke was the first executive director and then president of Americans for Job Security until April 2008, when Mr. DeMaura, recruited by Mr. Carney, took over.

Despite these well established ties, Stephen DeMaura (who is 25 and listed as the sole employee of AJS!) claims that all the calls the group makes about its multimillion dollar ad campaigns are made by him and him alone:

According to testimony in the Alaska case, the board meets once every two years, and there are no committees or written policies shaping decisions about ad campaigns. Mr. DeMaura said he made those calls. He disputed suggestions that he was influenced by the consultants with whom he shares an office.

“I work with them closely on a day-to-day basis, but we don’t discuss our work or coordinate anything,” he said. “It’s firewalled off.”

Meanwhile, AJS calls itself a business league and avoids all disclosure by reporting its contributions as “membership dues,” but a Times’ review of the group’s tax returns “shows membership revenue fluctuating wildly depending on election cycles — similar to the fund-raising of political committees that escalates during campaign season”:

“Membership dues and assessments” totaled $7 million in the 2004 presidential election, and dipped to $1.2 million the following year before climbing back to $3.9 million for the 2006 midterm elections. Then, in 2007, they plunged to zero before shooting up to $12.2 million for the 2008 presidential race.

Asked how it could have collected no dues in 2007, neither Mr. Dubke nor Mr. DeMaura offered an answer. Mr. DeMaura said that there is no set membership fee and that members are not required to pay annually.

“They can if they want,” he said.

AJS is perhaps the most egregious example of the phenomenon of political groups misrepresenting themselves on their tax filings in order to evade campaign finance regulations. But when the citizen watchdog group Public Citizen filed a complaint against the group in 2007, it never heard back from the IRS and an investigation recommended by FEC staff members was killed by its three GOP commissioners, who deadlocked the commission by voting against the idea.

With groups like AJS operating with total impunity, it’s no wonder that more and more similar outfits are following its lead this campaign cycle by registering as 501 nonprofit groups and then denying that any of its contributions were made with the express purpose of furthering its electioneering activities.

[Coordination] can be as simple as picking up the phone and calling a friend. Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour, the current chairman of the RGA, is an adviser to the AAN. The RGA, in turn, is on pace to spend even more than American Crossroads this year — at least $65 million and perhaps far more — in an effort that will be coordinated with Law’s group. A key RGA fundraiser is Fred Malek, a top GOP moneyman who is also on the board of the AAN. (Gillespie has joined Malek on at least one fundraising trip to New York for their respective outfits.) To make things really easy, Gillespie, Malek, Barbour, Law, Coleman and several other Republican fundraisers gather regularly to coordinate strategy. The attendees, who first convened at Karl Rove’s home, even have a nickname for themselves: the Weaver Terrace group, named for the Washington street on which Rove lives.

Also, on the strategic differences between the big right- and left-leaning groups currently in the fray:

Republicans say their new efforts merely level a playing field that Democrats and their allies — with the help of Barack Obama — have owned for several election cycles. Moreover, whatever the Republican groups are doing, Democrat-friendly labor unions are set to put some $150 million of their own money into the fall elections. Other groups, such as Emily’s List and the League of Conservation Voters, will kick in several million more. But this kind of cash is different from what the GOP groups are generating. Much of that union spending involves member-to-member communications, which Democratic operatives say are less effective than TV ads. And ads from unions and single-issue groups tend to be less effective than those from a purely tactical group like American Crossroads, which can tailor a flexible message.

The main source of his power, however, is his prolific fundraising, and here’s where Politico buries the lead. The article calls him “uniquely adept” at soliciting big contributions, and notes that his “clout is also derived from his serious interest in running for president in 2012, a point he is making clear in private conversations.” But the principle cause for the RGA’s success is structural in nature, not personally related to Barbour at all:

Barbour has a huge advantage over Republicans in Washington when it comes to raising money. The RGA is a 527 organization, which unlike the RNC or the federal PACs, can raise money in unlimited sums from individuals and corporations, the latter of which have been barred since 2002 from giving to party committees. That’s enabled drug makers and energy companies, for example, to give millions to Barbour’s RGA.

If your group is allowed to raise millions from individual donors and corporations, while the national parties and their Senate and House committees must stick to strictly capped donations from individuals and PACs, it’s easy to see how you might come to be regarded as “uniquely adept” at fundraising — but hardly fair. To be sure, Barbour’s reputation for fundraising also tracks back to his successful chairmanship of the RNC in the 1990s, but that was before “soft money” donations to the national parties were banned in 2002.

Heck, I’m mortified when it comes to asking people for money but I imagine that even I could outperform the RNC with the comparative advantages the RGA currently enjoys. Nonetheless, Barbour’s success at the RGA is earning him front page profiles and bolstering his chances at making a credible run for the Republican nomination in 2012.

The company’s media outlets play politics more openly than most, but the huge contribution to a party committee is a new step toward an open identification between Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. and the GOP. The company’s highest-ranking Democratic executive, Peter Chernin, recently departed. [...]

UPDATE: News Corp. Spokesman Jack Horner emails, “News Corporation believes in the power of free markets, and the RGA’s pro-business agenda supports our priorities at this most critical time for our economy.”

Think Progress jumped into the fray this afternoon, too, arguing that News Corp.’s donation might violate its own “Standards of Business Conduct” for dealing with government officials. The language they cite is pretty basic stuff prohibiting gifts or any sort of quid pro quo arrangements between employees and public officials, however, so the charge doesn’t really hold much water. The Supreme Court has set the bar pretty high for instances in which corporate spending on behalf of candidates might be considered to foster corruption or the appearance of corruption, and this certainly isn’t one of them. As for how the contribution reflects on Rupert Murdoch’s claim that his news outlets are fair and unbiased, well, that’s another story.

In a drawn-out press conference that began with a long series of apologies and repeated references to his friend Tom Davis, Sanford finally came to “the bottom line” when he said, “I’ve been unfaithful to my wife.” His mistress is an old friend with whom he began a relationship a year ago, he said.

The revelation comes on the heels of a similar admission by Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.), who, like Sanford, has been mentioned as a possible 2012 presidential candidate.

Sanford’s wife and children were not present at the conference.

–

You can follow TWI on Twitter and Facebook.