LA Weekly

Grist's Amanda Griscom Little has a fine column today on enviromentalists embrace of George Lakoff -- and his evident waning interest in them. Because I regard the Lakoff panacea as a distraction from the real requirements of political victory -- like, uh, cultivating the guts to stand for something -- I'm always looking for evidence that Lakoff isn't the genius Howard Dean thinks he is. Now it seems he's not even that reliable. Although Lakoff's Rockridge Institute signed a contract for $350,00
with the Green Group for a project to "reframe" environmental issues, the project has "foundered," Griscom reports, since Lakoff didn't show up for a January meeting.

Leaving aside any questions about Lakoff's capacities as the left's savior, it's hardly clear that environmentalism needs to be reframed the way Frank Luntz framed Bush's assault on the middle-class as acting in their interests. As Griscom writes:

"[S]ome in the environmental community argue that true political power-building requires a more pragmatic strategy. 'We need to wrap our minds around a fundamental fact: We lack electoral and political power. We don't have 51 committed environmental votes in the Senate,' said Mark Longabaugh, the recently departed senior vice president for political affairs at the League of Conservation Voters. 'We didn't lose the vote on drilling in the Alaskan wilderness two weeks ago; we lost it last November. To make real and sustained legislative progress, we don't need framing. We need to rededicate ourselves to the hard political work of winning elections.'"

Here, here.

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